
Class r o jZZ PS 
BooL/l/^ / 

Cogyiigfoy^/J 7 ^?^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 






r 7 



THE COMPLETE 
POETICAL WORKS OF 

JAMES RUSSELL' LOWELL 
Camkitige coition 




C V/,v//', vv/, I UZ ////'/ //■/.■//■ 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

<&ty fttoergioe ®u$$, Cambridge 






\<fc 



Copyright, 1848, 1857, 1866, 1868, 1869, 1876, 1885, 1888, 
By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

Copyright, 1894, 1896, 
By MABEL LOWELL BURNETT. 

Copyright, 1895, 

By CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. 

Copyright, 1896, 

By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 
Electrotypsd and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE 

The present Cambridge Edition of Mr. Lowell's poems contains, substantially 
in the order established by the author, the poems included by him not long before 
his death in the definitive Riverside Edition of his writings, and in addition the 
small group contained in the Last Poems, collected by his literary executor, Mr. 
Charles Eliot Norton. In the brief Prefatory Note to the four volumes of his 
Poems in the Riverside Edition, Mr. Lowell said : — 

" There are a great many pieces in these volumes, especially in the first of them, 
which I would gladly suppress or put into the Coventry of smaller print in an 
appendix. But ' ilka mon maun dree his weird,' and the avenging litera scripta 
manet is that of the over-hasty author. Owing to the unjust distinction made by 
the law between literary and other property, most of what I published prematurely 
has lost the protection of copyright, and is reprinted by others against my will. I 
cannot shake off the burthen of my early indiscretions if I would. The best way, 
perhaps, is to accept with silent contrition the consequences of one's own mistakes, 
and I have, after much hesitation, consented to the reprinting of the old editions 
without excision. 

" I must confess, however, that I have attained this pitch of self-sacrifice only by 
compulsion, and should have greatly preferred to increase the value of this collec- 
tion by lessening its bulk. The judicious reader will, I fear, distinguish only too 
easily what I should wish, in parliamentary phrase, ' to be taken as read.' As we 
grow older, we grow the more willing to say, as Petrarca in Landor's JPentameron 
says to Boccaccio, ' "We neither of us are such poets as we thought ourselves when 
we were younger.' " 

The Editor of this volume has not felt at liberty either to add poems left by the 
author in the deepening obscurity of old magazines, or to follow the probable judg- 
ment of Mr. Lowell in reducing any of his collected verse to the lower terms of an 
appendix. 

The method followed in the other volumes of the Cambridge series has been 
observed in this. The head-notes are occupied mainly with the history of the 
several poems ; criticism has been given only when the author himself was the 
critic. The Publishers and Editor desire to make acknowledgment to Mr. Norton, 
the editor, and Messrs. Harper & Brothers, the publishers, for their courtesy in 
allowing a liberal use to be made of Letters of James Russell Lowell, and special 
thanks are due Mr. Norton for the valuable aid which he has given the editor in 
the preparation of the volume. 

Boston, 4 Park Street, October 7, 1896. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGE 

[OGRAPHICAL SKETCH . . . ix 

EARLIER POEMS. 

Threnodia 1 

The Sirens 2 

Irenf; 4 

Serenade 5 

With a Pressed Flower . . 5 

The Beggar 5 

My Love 6 

Summer Storm . . . 7 

Love 8 

To Perdita, singing ... 8 

The Moon 9 

Remembered Music ... 10 

Song. To M. L 10 

AlLEGRA 10 

The Fountain ..... 11 

Ode 11 

vThe Fatherland . . . .14 

The Forlorn 14 

Midnight 15 

A Prayer . . . . . 15 
The Heritage . . . . .15 

The Rose : A Ballad ... 16 

Song, "Violet! sweet violet!" . 17 

Rosaline 17 

A Requiem 18 

A Parable 19 

Song, " O moonlight deep and ten- 
der" . . . . . . .19 

Sonnets 

I. To A. C. L. . . . 19 

II. "What were I, Love, 

DJ I WERE STRIPPED OP 

THEE ? " 20 

III. "I WOULD NOT HAVE THIS 
PERFECT LOVE OF OURS " 20 

IV. "For this true noble- 
ness I SEEK IN VAIN" . 20 

V. To the Spirit of Keats 20 

VI. "Great truths are por- 
tions OF THE SOUL OF MAN " 20 

VII. " I ASK NOT FOR THOSE 
THOUGHTS, THAT SUDDEN 
LEAP " 21 



PAGE 

VIII. To M. W., on her Birth- 
day . . . . .21 
IX. "My Love, I have no 

FEAR THAT THOU SHOULDST 

DIE" 21 

X. "I CANNOT THINK THAT 

THOU SHOULDST PASS AWAY " LI . 

XI. "There never yet was 

FLOWER FAIR IN VAIN " . 21 

Xn. Sub Ponders crescit . 22 

XIII. "Beloved, in the noisy 
city here" ... 22 

XIV. On Reading Words- 
worth's Sonnets in De- 
fence of Capital Punish- 
ment 22 

XV. The Same continued . 22 
XVI. The Same continued . 23 
XVn. The Same continued . 23 
XVIII. The Same continued . 23 
XIX. The Same concluded . 23 
XX. To M. O. S. . . . 23 
XXI. " Our love is not a fad- 
ing, EARTHLY FLOWER " . 24 

XXII. In Absence . . .24 

XXIH. Wendell Phillips . 24 

XXIV. The Street . . ... 24 

xxv. " i grieve not that 

ripe Knowledge takes 

away" .... 25 

XXVI. To J. R. Geddings . . 25 

XXVII. " I THOUGHT OUR LOVE AT 

full, but i did err " . 25 

L'Envoi 25 

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 

A Legend of Brittany . . 28 

Prometheus 38 

The Shepherd of King Admetus 44 
The Token . . . . . .44 

-An Incident in a Railroad Car 45 

Rhcecus 46 

The Falcon 48 

Tri^l 48 

A Glance behind the Curtain . 49 
A Chippewa Legend . . .53 



CONTENTS 



Stanzas on Freedom . 

Columbus 

An Incident of the Fire at 
Hamburg 

The Sower 

Hunger and Cold .... 

The Landlord 

\To a Pine-Tree .... 

Si descendero in Infernum, ades . 

To the Past 

To the Future 

Hebe 

The Search 

The Present Crisis 
, An Indian-Summer Reverie . 

The Growth of the Legend 

A Contrast 

Extreme Unction .... 

The Oak 

Ambrose 

Above and Below . . . 

The Captive 

The Birch-Tree .... 

An Interview with Miles 
Standish 

On the Capture of Fugitive 
Slaves near Washington . 

To the Dandelion .... 

The Ghost-Seer 

Studies for Two Heads 

On a Portrait of Dante by 
Giotto 

On the Death of a Friend's 
Child 

eurtdice 88 

v She came and went ... 89 

The Changeling . . . .89 

The Pioneer . . . . . 90 

Longing 91 

Ode to France. February, 1848 . 91 

Anti-Apis 94 

A Parable 95 

Ode written for the Celebra- 
tion of the Introduction of 
the cochituate water into the 
City of Boston . . . .96 

Lines suggested by the Graves 
of Two English Soldiers on 
Concord Battle-Ground . . 96 

To 97 

Freedom 97 

BlBLIOLATRES 99 

Beaver Brook .... 99 

MEMORIAL VERSES. 

Kossuth 100 

To Lamartine. 1848 . . . 101 



To John Gorham Palfrey 

To W. L. Garrison 

On the Death of Charles Ti 

Torrey .... |*9^^| 
Elegy on the Death of Dr. 

Channing 

To the Memory of Hood 

i THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFi- 



77 — THE 






104 

105 



LETTER FROM BOSTON. 
1846 .... 



December, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 
LOT 



THE UNHAPPY 
KNOTT 



OF MR. 



113 



FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED 
POEM 



AN ORIENTAL APOLOGUE . 
BIGLOW PAPERS. 



First Series. 
Notices of an Independent Press 
Note to Title-Page . 
Introduction . 
No. I. A Letter from 

EZEKIEL BlGLOW OF jAAl 

the Hon. Joseph T. Bucki: 

No. II. A Letter frob 
Hose a Biglow to the Hon. J. 
T. Buckingham . . ' . 

No. III. What Mr. Rc 
thinks I 

No. IV. Remarks of Increase 
D. O'Phace, Esq. . 

No. V. The Debate in the 
Sennit 

No. VI. The Pious E 
Creed .... 

No. VII. A Letter from a Can- 
didate for the Presidency I 
Answer to Suttin Qu: 
proposed by Mr. Hosea Bi 

No. VIII. A Second Lettej 
B. Sawin, Esq. . 

No. IX. A Third Letter 
B. Sawin, Esq. 

Second Series. 
The Courtin' . 

NO. I. BlRDOFREDUM SAWI* 

to Mr. Hosea Biglow . 
No. II. Mason and Slidell: A 

Yankee Idyll 
Jonathan to John 
No. III. Tjirdofredum Sawin. Esq., 

to Mr. Hosea Biglow 



les 

172 

174 









CONTENTS 



vn 



No. IV. A Message of Jeff Davis 

in Secret Session 
No. V. Speech of Honourable 

Preserved Doe in Secret 

Caucus 

No. VI. Sunthin' in the Pastoral 

Line 

No. VII. Latest Views of Mr. 

Biglow 

No. VLTI. Kettelopotomachia • 
No. IX. Some Memorials of the 

late Reverend H. Wilbur . 
No. X. Mr. Hosea Biglow to 

the Editor of the Atlantic 

Monthly 

No. XI. Mr. Hosea Biglow' s 

Speech in March Meeting • 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER 
POEMS. 
To Charles Eliot Norton • • 285 
Under the Willows .... 286 

Dara 291 

vThe First Snow-Fall . . 'J®L- 
The Singing Leaves • • • 1293 
Seaweed • ... 294 

The Finding of the Lyre • . 294 
New Year's Eve, 1850 . . .295 
For an Autograph • • • 295 

Al Fresco 295 

Masaccio 296 

Without and Within • • • 297 
Godminster Chtmes • • • 297 
The Parting of the Ways • • 298 

Aladdin 300 

An Invitation. To J. F. H. . . 300 

The Nomades 301 

Self-Study 302 

Pictures from Appledore . . 302 

The Wind-Harp 307 

Auf Wledersehen .... 308 

Palinode 308 

After the Burial .... 308 
The Dead House . . . .309 

A Mood 310 

The Voyage to Vinland . . 311 

Mahmood the Image-Breaker ■ 315 

Invita Minerva 315 

The Fountain of Youth . . 316 
Yussouf . .... 318 

The Darkened Mind . . . 319 
What Rabbi Jehosha satd . . 319 

All-Saints 319 

A Winter-Evening Hymn to my 

Fire 320 

Fancy's Casuistry .... 322 
To Mr. John Bartlett . . 322 



Ode to Happiness .... 323 

Villa Franca. 1859 . . . .324 

The Miner 325 

Gold Egg : a Dream-Fantasy . . 326 

A Familiar Epistle to a Friend 327 
An Ember Picture .... 329 

To H. W. L 330 

The Nightingale in the Study . 331 

In the Twilight .... 332 

The Foot-Path . ■ . . . .333 

POEMS OF THE WAR. 

The Washers of the Shroud . 334 
Two Scenes from the Life of 

Blondel 336 

Memorle Positum .... 337 
On Board the '76 ... 339 

— Ode recited at the Harvard 

Commemoration . . . 340 j 

L'ENVOI : To the Muse . . . .347 
-THE CATHEDRAL .... 349 
THREE MEMORIAL POEMS. 

Ode read at the One Hundredth 
Anniversary of the Fight at 
Concord Bridge . . - .361 

Under the Old Elm . . . 364 

An Ode for the Fourth of July, 
1876 370 

HEARTSEASE AND RUE. 
I. FRIENDSHIP. 



Agassiz 374 

To Holmes, on his Seventy-fifth 

Birthday 381 

In a Copy of Omar KhayyAm . 382 
On receiving a Copy of Mr. 
Austin Dobson's " Old World 
Idylls" . . . . • .382 
To C F. Bradford . . .383 

Bankside 383 

Joseph Winlock .... 384 
Sonnet, To Fanny Alexander . 385 
Jeffries Wyman .... 385 
To a Friend . . - . . . .385 
With an Armchair . . . 385 

E. G. de R 386 

Bon Voyage 386 

To Whitteer, on his Seventy- 
fifth Birthday .... 386 
On an Autumn Sketch of H. G. 

Wild 387 

To Miss D. T 387 

With a Copy of Aucassln and 
Nicolete 387 



contents; 



On Planting a Tree at Invera- 
ray 387 

An Epistle to George William 
Curtis 388 

H. SENTIMENT. 
Endymion • • • • ■ • • 392 
•The Black Preacher • • . 395 
Arcadia Rediviva .... 396 

The Nest 397 

A Youthful Experiment in Eng- 
lish Hexameters .... 398 
Birthday Verses .... 398 
Estrangement 398 

Phoebe 399 

Das Ewig-Weebliche . . . .399 

The Recall 400 

Absence 400 

Monna Lisa 400 

The Optimist 400 

On Burning some Old Letters . 401 

The Protest 401 

The Petition 402 

Fact or Fancy ? 402 

Agro-Dolce 402 

The Broken Tryst . . . . 402 

Casa sin Alma 403 

A Christmas Carol .... 403 
My Portrait Gallery . . . 403 
Paolo to Francesca .... 403 
Sonnet, Scottish Border » . 404 
Sonnet, On being asked for an 

Autograph in Venice . . . 404 
The Dancing Bear . . . 404 
The Maple 405 

NlGHTWATCHES 405 

Death of Queen Mercedes . . 405 
Prison of Cervantes . . . 405 
To a Lady playing on the Cith- 
ern 406 

The Eye's Treasury . . . 406 

Pesslmoptlmism 406 

The Brakes 406 

A Foreboding 407 

in. FANCY. 

Under the October Maples . 407 
Love's Clock .... 407 

Eleanor makes Macaroons . 408 

Telepathy 408 

Scherzo 408 

"Franciscus de Verulamio sic 

cogitavit" 409 

Auspex 409 

The Pregnant Comment . . . 409 
The Lesson 410 



Science and Poetry . . . .410 
A I Tew Year's Greeting . . 4K 

The Discovery 41/, 

With a Seashell . . . .411 
The Secret 411 

IV. HUJViOR AND SATIRE. 

Fitz Adam's Story .... 411 
The Origjn of Didactic Poetry . 421 
The Flying Dutchman . . .422 
Credidimus Jovem regnare . . 42 '-: 
Tempora Mutantur . . .42 
In the Half-Way House . . 42 S 
At the Burns Centennial . . 427 

In an Album 430 

At the Commencement Dinner, 

1866 43ii 

A Parable 43 

V. EPIGRAMS. 

Sayings 43 

Inscriptions 43 

A Misconception . . . .43 

The Boss 433 

Sun-Worship 43 

Changed Perspective . . .43 
With a Pair of Gloves lost in a 

Wager 433 

Sixty-eighth Birthday . . . 433 
International Copyright . . 43 

LAST POEMS. 

how i consulted the oracle of 

the Goldfishes .... 433 
Turner's Old Temeraire . . 436 
St. Michael the Weigher . .43 

A Valentine 43 

An April Birthday — at Sea . 437 
Love and Thought ... 43 
The Nobler Lover . . . .43 
On hearing a Sonata of Beetho- 
ven's PLAYED IN THE NEXT ROOM . 43 

Verses, intended to go with a 

Posset Dish 43 

On a Bust of General Grant . 43 

APPENDIX. 

I. Introduction to the Second Se- 
ries of Biglow Papers . .441 
II. Glossary to the Biglow Papers 45 I 

III. Index to the Biglow Papers . 46 

IV. Notes and Illustrations . . 471 
V. A Chronological List of Mr. 

Lowell's Poems . . . .481 

INDEX OF FIRST LINES . . .48 
INDEX OF TITLES ..... 45 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

About half a mile from the Craigie House in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the road 

s to the old town of Watertown, is Elm wood, a spacious square house set amongst 

lilac and syringa bushes, and overtopped by elms. Pleasant fields are on either side, and 

Ldows one may look out on the Charles River winding its way among the 

hes. ! he house itself is one of a group which before the war for independence be- 

! to Boston merchants and officers of the crown, most of whom refused to take the 

i the revolutionary party. Tory Row was the name given to the broad winding road 

lich the houses stood. Large farms and gardens were attached to them, and some 

sign of their roomy ease still remains. The estates fell into the hands of various persons 

after the war, and in process of time Longfellow came to occupy and later to own Craigie 

| House. Elmwood at that time was the property of the Reverend Charles Lowell, minister 

! of the West Church in Boston ; and when Longfellow thus became his neighbor, James 

Russell Lowell was a junior in Harvard College. He was born at Elmwood February 

82, 1819 ; he died at the same place August 12, 1891. 

He was named for his father's maternal grandfather, and was the youngest of a family 
I of five, two daughters and three sons. His father at the time of Lowell's birth was 
thirty-seven years old and lived till 1861. His son has drawn his portrait in a letter to 
C. F. Briggs, written in 1844 : "He is Dr. Primrose in a comparative degree, the very 
simplest and charmingest of sex agen arians, and not without a great deal of the truest 
magnanimity." It was characteristic^oiXowell thus to find a prototype of his father in 
literature. The Lowells traced their descent from Percival Lowell, — a name which 
Burvives in the family, — of Bristol, England, who settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, in 
1639. The great-grandfather of James Russell Lowell was a minister in Newburyport, 
one of those, as Dr. Hale says, "who preached sermons when young men went out to 
fight the French, and preached sermons again in memory of their death, when they had 
been slain in battle." The grandfather was John Lowell, a member of the Constitutional 
Convention of Massachusetts in 1780. It was he who introduced into the Bill of Rights 
a phrase from the Bill of Rights of Virginia, " All men are created free and equal," 
with the purpose which it effected of setting free every man then held as a slave in 
Massachusetts. A son of John Lowell and half-brother of the Rev. Charles Lowell was 
Francis Cabot Lowell, who gave a great impetus to New England manufactures, and 
from whom the city of Lowell took its name. Another son, and thus also an uncle of the 
poet, was John Lowell, Jr., whose wise and far-sighted provision gave his native city that 
important centre of intellectual influence, the Lowell Institute. 

The mother of the poet, Mrs. Harriet Spence Lowell, a native of Portsmouth, New 
Hampshire, was of Scotch origin. She is described as having " a great memory, an ex- 
traordinary aptitude for language, and a passionate fondness for ancient songs and bal- 
lads." It pleased her to fancy herself descended from the hero of one of the most famous 
r , Sir Patrick Spens. In a letter to his mother, written in 1837, Lowell says : " I 
• gaged in several poetical effusions, one of which I have dedicated to you, who 
8 been the patron and encourager of my youthful muse." The Russell in his 
s to intimate a strain of Jewish ancestry ; at any rate Lowell took pride in 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



the name on this account, for he was not slow to recognize the intellectual pov. ci ^ ;,„. 
Hebrew race. An older brother of the poet who outlived him a short time, was th< 
Rev. Robert Traill Spence Lowell, who wrote some poems, a story of school-boy life, and 
a novel, The New Priest in Conception Bay, which contains a delightful study of a Yankee 
and striking sketches of life in Newfoundland, where its author was for a while a mis- 
sionary. A sister, Mrs. Anna Lowell Putnam, will be remembered among older lovers of 
literature for a group of singularly fine and thoughtful studies under the title Records 
of an Obscure Life. 

Not long before his death, Lowell wrote to an English friend a description of Elm- 
wood ; and as he was very fond of the house in which he lived and died, it is agreeable to 
read words which strove to set it before the eyes of one who had never seen it. " 'T is 
a pleasant old house, just about twice as old as I am, four miles from Boston, in what 
was once the country and is now a populous suburb. But it still has some ten acres of 
open about it, and some fine old trees. When the worst comes to the worst (if I li. <=o 
long) I shall still have four and a half acres left with the house, the rest belonging ti 
my brothers and sisters or their heirs. It is a square house, with four rooms on a floor 
like some houses of the Georgian era I have seen in English provincial towns, only they 
are of brick, and this is of wood. But it is solid with its heavy oaken beams, the space; 
between which in the four outer walls are filled in with brick, though you must n't fane;, 
a brick-and-timber house, for outwardly it is sheathed with wood. Inside there is much 
wainscot (of deal), painted white in the fashion of the time when it was built. It is very 
sunny, the sun rising so as to shine (at an acute angle to be sure) through the northern 
windows, and going round the other three sides in the course of the day. There is a 
pretty staircase with the quaint old twisted banisters, — which they call balusters now ; 
but mine are banisters. My library occupies two rooms opening into each other by arches 
at the sides of the ample chimneys. The trees I look out on are the earliest things I 
remember. There you have me in my new-old quarters. But you must not fancy a 
large house — rooms sixteen feet square, and on the ground floor, nine high. It was 
large, as things went here, when it was built, and has a certain air of amplitude about it 
as from some inward sense of dignity." In an earlier letter he wrote : " Here I am in 
my garret. I slept here when I was a little curly-headed boy, and used to see vision? 
between me and the ceiling, and dream the so often recurring dream of having the earth 
put into my hand like an orange. In it I used to be shut up without a lamp, — my 
mother saying that none of her children should be afraid of the dark, — to hide my 
head under the pillow, and then not be able to shut out the shapeless monsters that 
thronged around me, minted in my brain. ... In winter my view is a wide one, taking 
in a part of Boston. I can see one long curve of the Charles and the wide fields between 
me and Cambridge, and the flat marshes beyond the river, smooth and silent with glit- 
tering snow. As the spring advances and one after another of our trees puts forth, the 
landscape is cut off from me piece by piece, till, by the end of May, I am closeted in a 
cool and rustling privacy of leaves." 

Elmwood in the days of Lowell's boyhood was in a more distinctly rural neighborhood 
than now, and until lately had the charm of seclusion. In his papers " My Garden 
Acquaintance " and " A Good Word for Winter," in many of his poems, such as " An 
Indian-Summer Reverie," "To the Dandelion," "Under the Willows,'' " Al Fresco," 
and in many passages in his letters, he bears witness to the intimacy which he enjoyed 
with that phase of nature which we may call homely and friendly. He once expressed 
to me his delight in Poussin's landscapes, not because of their homeliness, for they have 






BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



nothing of this quality, but because of their stately, classical scenery, and the beauty of 
their composition ; but in his descriptive poetry it is noticeable that the large, solemn, 
or expansive scenes of nature make no such appeal to his interest as those nearer vistas 
which come close to human life and connect themselves with the familiar experience of 
home-keeping wits. His lively paper " Cambridge Thirty Years Ago " contains many 
reminiscences of his early life and associations. 

Lowell's school days were spent in his own neighborhood. Mr. William Wells, an 
Englishman and at one time a publisher, opened a classical school in one of the spacious 
Tory Row houses near Elmwood, and, bringing with him English public school thorough- 
less and severity, gave the boy a drilling in Latin which his quick appropriation of strong 
influences turned into a familiar possession, to judge by the ease with which he handled 
t afterward in mock heroics. Possibly the heavy hand of the schoolmaster, by its repres- 
sion, gave greater buoyancy to the spirit of the student when the comparative freedom 
)f college followed. Lowell was in his sixteenth year when he entered Harvard College 
with the class which graduated in 1838. He lived at his father's house, more than a mile 
iway from the college yard ; but this could have been no great privation to him, for he 
Le freedom of his friends' rooms, and he loved the open air. The Rev. Edward 
Everett Hale has given a sketch of their common life in college. " He was a little older 
:,han I," he says, " and was one class in advance of me. My older brother, with whom I 
lived in college, and he were most intimate friends. He had no room within the college 
walls [he had for a time a room close by on Church Street], and was a great deal with 
as. The fashion of Cambridge was then literary. Now the fashion of Cambridge runs 
to social problems, but then we were interested in literature. We read Byron and Shelley 
and Keats, and we began to read Tennyson and Browning. I first heard of Tennyson 
from Lowell, who had borrowed from Mr. Emerson the little first volume of Tennyson. 
We actually passed about Tennyson's poems in manuscript. Carlyle's essays were being 
printed at the time, and his French Revolution. In such a community — not two hundred 
and fifty students all told — literary effort was, as I say, the fashion, and literary men, 
among whom Lowell was recognized from the very first, were special favorites. In- 
deed, there was that in him which made him a favorite everywhere." 

Lowell was a reader, as so many of his fellows were, and the letters which he wrote 
shortly after leaving college show how intent he had been on making acquaintance with 
the best things in literature. He began also to scribble verse, and he wrote both poems 
and essays for college magazines, and literary societies. His class chose him their 
poet for Class Day, and he wrote his poem ; but he was careless about conforming to 
college regulations respecting attendance at morning prayers ; and for this was suspended 
from college the last term of his last year, and not allowed to come back to deliver 
his poem. He was sent to Concord for his rustication, and so passed a few weeks of 
his youth among scenes dear to every lover of American history and letters. 

In " An Indian-Summer Reverie " Lowell says : — 

kt Though lightly prized the ribboned parchments three, 
Yet collegisse juvat, I am glad 
That here what colleging was mine I had, — 
It linked another tie, dear native town, with thee ! " 

Whether or no there had been a reaction from the discipline of school days, it is certain 
that the independence which characterized Lowell throughout his life found expression 
in bis college days, not in insubordination, but in a frank pursuit of those courses of study 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



and lines of reading to which he was led by his own likings and which the tole 
equipment of the college and home library put it in his power to follow. " Never, 
Lowell in his essay, "A Great Public Character," when speaking of college life, — 
" Never were we ourselves so capable of the various great things we have never done ; ' 
and however much he may have been generalizing for college youth, he recalled well » 
his own spiritual experience ; with an impulse which outwardly was wayward, he obeyed 
that law of his being which his growing consciousness of intellectual power disclosed to 
him. In his penetrating discrimination between talent and genius, he says profoundly : 
" The man of talents possesses them like so many tools, does his job with them, ; ad there 
an end ; but the man of genius is possessed by it, and it makes him into a book or a life 
according to its whim. Talent takes the existing moulds and makes its castings better 
or worse, of richer or baser metal, according to knack and opportunity ; but genius is 
always shaping new ones and runs the man in them, so that there is always that human 
feel in the results which give us a kindred thrill. What it will make, we can only con- 
jecture, contented always with knowing the infinite balance of possibility against .v doll 
it can draw at pleasure." His was a singularly self-centred nature, and he was a 
true to those large ideals which he drew from history and literature ; but so various were 
his intellectual interests and so abundant his capacities, that the precise direction was un- 
certain in which his genius would at any time take him. 

It is interesting to observe this self-centred nature in its early struggle after equipoise 
After his graduation he set about the study of law, and for a short time even was a cleil 
in a counting-room ; but his bent was strongly toward literature. His vacillation o: 
mind regarding his vocation, his apparent fickleness of purpose, the conflict going on be 
tween his nature craving expression and the world with its imperious demand th< 
ring within him of large designs, and the happy contentment in the pleasures of i b 
all seek outlet in his natural yet uneasy letters. He was finding himself in these earl;, 
days, as many another young man, and there are glimpses all through Lowell's lette 
this restlessness, this subtle sense of one's self which in weaker natures hardens into ; 
mordant self-consciousness. Now and then he turns upon himself in a sort of mingle< 
pride and shame, as if at once aware of his power and angry that he has it not 
his beck. But for the most part one is aware of a nature singularly at one wit ■ i 
and finding its greatest satisfaction in getting at the world through the reflection of th» 
world in literature. * No one would deny that Lowell was eminently a man of boo : 
it would be a wholly inadequate phrase which described him as a bookish man. Thar h< 
was at home in a library his early letters show ; but they show also how even then he reac 
through his books into life, aud interpreted history and literature by means of an innai 
spiritual faculty which was independent of intellectual authority. It is this criticism a 
first hand, this swift, direct penetration of the reality, which mark emphatically what 
have characterized as Lowell's self-centred nature. He has told us that his bra 
quired a long brooding time ere it could hatch anything. He was speaking of the i 
of expression; but the phrase is a fit one for his habitual temper. The superfi 
of indolence could apply only to his apparent disregard of bustling activity. ) 
was of the sort that knows the power of stillness, and though he upbraids hin 
letters for his unproductiveness at times, he had plainly the instinct which w i 
portunity. His faculty of observation was very strong, but it was no stronge 
power of assimilation ; and thus it was that when opportunity came he ha 1 not hur- 
riedly to adjust himself to the situation. 

It was while he was engaged with his books and his friends, professing law but prac- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



tising literature in the way of poetical and prose contributions to the magazines, that he 
was roused out of his dreams by the prick of necessity in the sudden loss by his father 
of much of his property, and by the impulse given to his own moral force by the coming 
into his life of Maria White. He became engaged to this lady in the fall of 1840, and 
the next twelve years of his life were profoundly affected by her influence. Herself a 
poet of delicate power, she brought an intelligent sympathy with his work ; it was, how- 
ever, her strong moral enthusiasm, her lofty conception of purity and justice, which 
kindled his spirit and gave force and direction to a character which was ready to respond 
and yet might otherwise have delayed active expression. They were not married until 
1844, but they were not far apart in their homes, and during these years Lowell was 
making those early ventures in literature, and first raids upon political and moral evil, 
which foretold the direction of his later work, and gave some hint of its abundance. 

In 1841 he collected the poems which he had written and sometimes contributed to 
periodicals into a volume entitled A Year's Life, and inscribed in a veiled dedication to 
his future wife. In hopes of bettering his fortune, and in obedience to the instinct which 
most young men of letters have, he undertook with Robert Carter the publication of a 
literary journal, The Pioneer, which died under their inexperienced hands with the third 
number, but in those had printed contributions by Lowell, Hawthorne, Whittier, Story, 
Poe, and Dr. Parsons, — a group which it would be hard to match in any of the little 
magazines that hop across the world's path to-day. He began also to turn his studies 
in dramatic and early poetic literature to account, and, after printing a portion of them in 
Nathan Hale's Miscellany, published, in 1844, Conversations on some of the Old Poets. He 
did not keep this book alive ; but it is interesting as marking the enthusiasm of a young 
scholar treading a way then almost wholly neglected in America, and indicating a line of 
thought and study in which he afterwards made most noteworthy venture. In the same 
year he again collected his poetic work into a volume of Poems. The difference be- 
tween the two volumes of poems, though separated by three years only, is marked. Few 
of the verses from A Year's Life are included in the poet's final collection of his writ- 
ings, few are omitted from Poems. One poem in the earlier volume, Irene, is con- 
spicuous as a poetic portrait of the figure of peace which had come into his somewhat 
turbulent spiritual life ; but the volume as a whole is characterized by vague sentimen- 
talism and restless beating of half-grown wings. Three years later, some of this same 
immaturity is discoverable, but along with the poems which wander in somewhat 
unmeaning ways are those spirited adventures like " Rhcecus," " The Shepherd of Ring 
Admetus," and "Prometheus," which denote the growing consciousness of positive poetic 
power, and also those stirring Sonnets to Wendell Phillips and J. R. Giddings, and the 
lines entitled " A Glance behind the Curtain," which disclose a new passion leaping up as 
the champion of truth and righteousness. It is noticeable, too, that in the first volume 
there is no trace of humor and scarcely any singular felicity of phrase ; in the second, wit 
and humor begin to play a little on the surface. In Conversations, where the familiar 
form gives freer scope, there is a gayety of speech which intimates the spontaneity of the 
man and anticipates the rich fruitage of later years. In all these books, however, there 
is good evidence of the rapid growth which was taking place in Lowell's intellectual and 
moral life, a coming to his own which it would take only some strong occasion to make 
sure. 

This occasion was the Mexican War, with the greater contest which flamed up with it 
over the encroachments of slavery. Lowell and his wife, who brought a fervid anti- 
slavery temper as part of her marriage portion, were both contributors to the Liberty Bell 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



and Lowell was a frequent contributor to the Antislavery Standard, and was indeed for a 
while a corresponding editor ; but in June, 1846, there appeared one day in the Boston 
Courier a letter purporting to be from Mr. Ezekiel Biglow of Jalaam to the Hon. Joseph 
T. Buckingham, editor of the Boston Courier, enclosing a poem of his son, Mr. Hosea Big- 
low. It was no new thing to seek to arrest the public attention with the vernacular 
applied to public affairs- Major Jack Downing and Sam Slick had been notable exam- 
ples, and they had many imitators ; but the reader who laughed over the racy narrative 
of the unlettered Ezekiel, and then took up Hosea's poem and caught the gust of Yankee 
wrath and humor blown fresh in his face, knew that he was in with the appearance of 
something new in American literature. A score of years afterward, when introducing 
the Second Series of The Biglow Papers, Lowell confessed that when he wrote this 
letter and poem he had no definite plan, and no intention of ever writing another. It 
was struck out from him by the revolt of his nature at the iniquity of slavery and the 
war into which slavery was dragging the nation. But he adds, "The success of my 
experiment soon began not only to astonish me, but to made me feel the responsibility of 
knowing that I held in my hand a weapon, instead of the mere fencing stick I had sup- 
posed. ... If I put on the cap and bells, and made myself one of the court fools of 
King Demos, it was less to make his Majesty laugh than to win a passage to his royal 
ears for certain serious things which I had deeply at heart." 

The Biglow Papers not only gave Lowell to himself and opened the flood gates of 
his patriotism and his noble indignation ; they gave him a public, and thus furnished the 
complement which every author demands. " Very far," he says, in the same Introduc- 
tion, " from being a popular author under my own name, so far, indeed, as to be almost 
unread, I found the verses of my pseudonym copied everywhere ; I saw them pinned up 
in workshops ; I heard them quoted and their authorship debated." The force which he 
displayed in these satires made his book at once a powerful ally of a sentiment which 
heretofore had been ridiculed ; it turned the tables and put Antislavery, which had been 
fighting sturdily on foot with pikes, into the saddle, and gave it a flashing sabre. For 
Lowell himself it won an accolade from King Demos. He rose up a knight, and thence- 
forth possessed a freedom which was a freedom of nature, not a simple badge of service 
in a single cause. His patriotism and moral fervor found other vents in later life, and 
he never laid down the sword which he then took up, but it is significant of the stability 
of his genius that he was not misled by the sudden distinction which came to him into a 
limitation of his powers. It was shortly after this that he wrote, in one of those poetic 
absences from his every-day life, which were to overtake him more than once afterward, 
his Vision of Sir Launfal ; and the exuberance of his nature, together with his keen 
power of criticism, found expression about the same time in his witty Fable for Critics, 
in which he hit off, with a rough and ready wit, the characteristics of the writers of the 
day, not forgetting himself in these lines : — 

There is Lowell, who 's striving Parnassus to climb 
With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme ; 
He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, 
But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders ; 
The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching 
Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching ; 
His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well, 
But he 'd rather by half make a drum of the shell, 
And rattle away till he 's old as Methusalem, 
At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



This, of course, is but a half serious portrait of himself, and it touches but a single 
feature. A third volume of Poems appeared in the same year, 1848, as the last named. 

A year in Europe, 1851-52, with his wife, whose health was then precarious, stimulated 
his scholarly interests, and gave substance to his study of Bante and Italian literature. 
In October, 1853, his wife died; she had borne him four children : the first-born, Blanche, 
died in infancy, as did the second, Rose ; the third, Walter, also died young; the fourth, 
a daughter, Mrs. Burnett, survived her parents. In 1855 he was chosen successor to 
Mr. Longfellow as Smith Professor of the French and Spanish Languages and Litera- 
tures, and Professor of Belles Lettres in Harvard College. He spent two years in Europe 
in further preparation for the duties of his office, and in 1857 was again established in 
Cambridge and installed in his academic chair. He married also at this time his second 
wife, Miss Frances Dunlap, of Portland, Maine. 

Lowell was now in his thirty-ninth year. As a scholar, in his professional work, he 
had acquired a knowledge of the Romance languages and was an adept in Old French 
and Provencal poetry ; he had given a course of twelve lectures on English Poetry 
before the Lowell Institute in Boston which had made a strong impression on the com- 
munity ; and his work on the series of British Poets in connection with Professor Child, 
especially his biographical sketch of Keats, had been recognized as of a high order. 
In poetry he had published the volumes already mentioned. In general literature he 
had printed in magazines the papers which he afterward collected into his volume Fire- 
side Travels. Not long after he entered on his college duties The Atlantic Monthly was 
started, and the editorship given to him. For the details of the office he had little 
aptitude, although he looked keenly after nice points of literary finish in the proof-read- 
ing ; he was relieved of much of the detail by his active assistant, Mr. F. H. Underwood, 
to whom the inception of the magazine was largely due. But the Atlantic afforded a 
good outlet for his literary production, and though he held the editorship but a little 
more than two years he stamped the magazine with the impress of his high ideals in lit- 
erature and criticism ; his selection of articles was judicious, his own contributions and 
criticism were full of life, and he was most generous in his critical aid to contributors. 
In 1862 he was associated with Mr. Charles Eliot Norton in the conduct of The North 
American Revieio, and continued in this charge for ten years. Much of his prose was 
contributed to this periodical. 

These twenty years, from 1857 to 1877, were the most productive period of Lowell's 
literary activity. He was in the maturity of his mental power, he held a convenient 
position in University life, his home relations were congenial and stimulating, and his 
collegiate work, as well as his editorial charge successively of the Atlantic and North 
American, gave him a needed impulse to literary effort. During this period appeared the 
most of that body of literary history and criticism which marks him as the most distin- 
guished of American critics. Any one reading the titles of the papers which comprise 
the volumes of his prose writings will readily see how much literature, and especially 
poetic literature, occupied his attention. Shakespeare, Dryden, Lessing, Rousseau, 
Dante, Spenser, Wordsworth, Milton, Keats, Carlyle, Percival, Thoreau, Swinburne, 
Chaucer, Emerson, Pope, Gray, — these are the principal subjects of his prose, and the 
range of topics indicates the catholicity of his taste. These papers are the rich deposit 
of a mind at once sympathetic and discriminating, capable of enjoying to the full the 
varied manifestations of life in literature, and combining judicial fairness with keen 
critical insight. 

While this broad stream of literary criticism was flowing, there was another expression 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



of Lowell's nature, never divorced from this love of letters, — a criticism of life, esj 
cially as it took form in contemporaneous American history. The period which I ha 
named covered the preparation for the war for the Union, that war itself, and the recc - 
struction era afterward, and the expression of Lowell's nature in its attitude toward 
the whole period was manifold. The volume of Political Essays contains the incisi 
papers which stung the irresolute and time-serving, and inspirited the ardent lovers 
truth and liberty. It is impossible to read these papers now without admiration for t 
political sagacity of the writer, — a sagacity before the event, not after. Every pa 
bears witness to the sanity with which he regarded contemporaneous affairs, when ma 
ness seemed the most natural temper in the world, and his insight of human nature w 
that of a poet who did not regard his power of vision as excluding the necessity of payii ; 
taxes. History has been supplying foot-notes to these pages, with the result, not of cc 
recting the text, but of confirming it. 

In this same period also he wrote and published the Second Series of The Biglc 
Papers, and used his satire and his moral indignation with a depth of feeling which su - 
passed that shown in the first series, a little to the detriment thereby, it may be, of tl 
gaiety of the humor. In truth, strong as was Lowell's power of invective, his passion 
of patriotism found this vent too narrow ; there was a large, constructive imaginatic 
at work on the great theme of national life, which found fuller expression in the Od 
which the Centennial and Commemorative occasions called out. Lowell seized the: 
occasions with a spirit which scarcely needed them, and merely employed them as i 
opportunities for casting in large moulds the great thoughts and feelings which ro: 
out of the life of a man conscious of his inheritance in a noble patrimony. 

It was at the close of this period, in which he had done incalculable service to tl 
Republic, that Lowell was called on to represent the country, first at Madrid, where 1 
was sent by President Hayes in 1877, and afterwards at London, to which he was tran 
ferred in 1880. He had a good knowledge of Spanish language and literature when 1 
went to Spain, but he at once took pains to make his knowledge fuller and his accei 
more perfect, so that he could have intimate relations with the best Spanish men < 
the time. In England he was at once a most welcome guest, and a most effects 
public speaker. Eight years were thus spent by him in the foreign service of the com. 
try. His sole participation in practical politics, as the term is, up to this time had bee 
to attend a national convention once as delegate, and to have his name used as Presides 
tial Elector. To the minds of many of his countrymen he seemed doubtless a dilettant 
in politics. Special preparation in diplomacy he had not, but he had what was mor 
fundamental, a large nature enriched by a familiar intercourse with great minds, and s 
sane, so sound in its judgment, that whether he was engaged in determining a reading i 
an Elizabethan dramatist or in deciding to which country an Irish colossus belonged, h 
was bringing his whole nature to the bench. No one can read Lowell's despatches fror.^ 
Madrid and London without being struck by his sagacity, his readiness in emergencies 
his interest in and quick perception of the political situation in the country where he wa 
resident, and his unerring knowledge as a man of the world. Nor could Lowell lay asid 
in his official communications the art and the wit which were native to him. " I aske< 
Lord Lyons," he writes in one letter, " whether he did not think suzerainty might be de 
fined as ' leaving to a man the privilege of carrying the saddle and bridle after you hav 
stolen his horse.' He assented." 

But though Lowell's studies and experience had given him a preparation for dealing 
with diplomatic questions, the firmness with which he held his political faith afforded a 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



sure a preparation for that more significant embassy which he bore from the American 

people to the English. Not long after his return he published a little volume containing 

e more important speeches which he had made while in England. Most of them had 

do with literature, but the title-address in the volume, Democracy, was an epigram- 

: ■ atic confession of political faith as hopeful as it was wise and keen. A few years later 

i gave another address to his own countrymen on " The Place of the Independent in 

)litics." It was a noble apologia, not without a trace of discouragement at the appar- 

tly sluggish movement of the recent years, but with that faith in the substance of his 

untrymen which gave him the right to use words of honest scorn and warning. What 

impresses one especially in reading this address, remembering the thoughtless gibes 

which had been flung at this patriot, is the perfect self-respect with which he defines his 

■sition, the entire absence of petty retaliation upon his aspersers, the kindliness of na- 

re, the charity, in a word, which is the finest outcome of a strong political faith. It 

uust have been galling to Lowell to find himself taunted with being un-American. He 

t : »uld afford to meet such a charge with silence, but he answered it with something better 

Bkn silence when he reprinted in a volume his scattered political essays. 

The public life of Mr. Lowell made him more of a figure before the world. He re- 
ived honors from societies and universities ; he was decorated by the highest honors 
■•• -rich Harvard could pay officially, and Oxford and Cambridge, St. Andrews and Edin- 
burgh, and Bologna, gave gowns. He established warm personal relations with English- 
men, and after his release from public office he made several visits to England. There, 
o, was buried his wife, who died in 1885. The closing years of his life in his own 
country, though touched with domestic loneliness and diminished by growing physical 
infirmities that predicted his death, were rich also with the continued expression of his 
t',rge personality. He delivered the public address in commemoration of the 250th anni- 
versary of the founding of Harvard University, he gave a course of lectures on the Old 
aglish Dramatists before the Lowell Institute, he collected a volume of his poems, he 
spoke and wrote on public affairs, and the year before his death revised, rearranged, and 
carefully edited a definitive series of his writings in ten volumes. Since his death three 
small volumes have been added to his collected writings, and Mr. Norton has published 
Letters of James Russell Lowell in two volumes. 
For anything like an adequate apprehension of Lowell's rich nature, the reader unac- 
tainted with him during his lifetime, needs to read these Letters and the whole body 
..:•£ his prose and poetry; a nature at once so spontaneous and so lavish of its best gifts 
not to be bounded by the arbitrary limits of a biography, brief or extended. Yet the 
( •terns alone as contained in this volume do much to reveal to the attentive reader the 
personality of their author. He was the most companionable of men, and shared his 
rge gifts with chance acquaintance so freely that one sometimes wondered what he 
bived for more intimate friends ; and yet his fine reserve was apparent even to those 
v/ho knew him best. The humor which underlies so much even of his stately verse was 
constant quantity in his temperament, closely allied with shrewd sagacity; the senti- 
ent and fancy which find expression sometimes in an entire poem, more often in phrase 
id line, played about his conversation in familiar intercourse; but as his verse when 
read in its fulness is charged with noble passion and with an imagination in which 
human experience and personal emotion are fused in a high ideal, so no one could long 
:-3 with the poet without recognizing that he was in the presence of a character which 
>mbined the unflinching earnestness of the Puritan with the mellowness of a man of the 
ceat world. H. E. S. 



EARLIER POEMS 



The first book of poetry issued by Lowell, 
if we except the pamphlet containing- his Class 
Poem, was A Year's Life, published in 1841 
by C. C. Little and J. Brown, Boston. It con- 
tained thirty-two poems and songs and thirty- 
five sonnets, besides a V envoi headed " Goe, Lit- 
tle Booke," and a dedication addressed, though 
not fo mally, to Miss Maria White, to whom 
he hac 1 become engaged in the fall of 1840. 

The gentle Una I have loved, 

The snowy maiden, pure and mild, 

Since ever by her side I roved 

Through ventures strange, a wondering child, 

In fantasy a Red Cross Knight 

Burning for her dear sake to fight. 

If there be one who can, like her, 
Make sunshine in life's shady places, 
One in whose holy bosom stir 
As many gentle household graces, — 
And such I think there needs must be, — 
Will she accept this book from me ? 

The poems which filled the volume had 
appeared in The Knickerbocker, The Southern 
Literary Messenger, and some of the Boston 



newspapers. How little value the author set 
upon the contents of this first volume is evident 
when one discovers that on making his first 
general collection of poems in 1849, he retained 
but seven of those printed in A Year's Life. 
He continued to contribute to the magazines 
of his time, especially to The Democratic Re- 
view, Graham's Magazine, The Boston Miscel- 
lany, and The Pioneer, the last named being a 
very short-lived magazine which he conducted 
in company with Mr. Robert Carter, and in 
1843 he issued a second volume of Poems, in 
which he gathered the product of the inter- 
vening time, whether printed or in manuscript. 
The division Earlier Poems, first used in the 
collection dated 1877, contains but seven of 
the poems, two of them being sonnets included 
in A Year's Life. Of the thirty-five poems and 
thirty-seven sonnets printed in the 1843 volume 
of Poems, seven poems and thirteen sonnets 
were silently dropped from later collections, 
and the poems included in the two volumes 
were distributed mainly between the two di- 
visions Earlier Poems and Miscellaneous Poems. 



THRENODIA 

As first printed in The Knickerbocker maga- 
zine for May, 1839, this poem bore the title 
Threnodia on an Infant, and was signed H. P., 
the initials for Hugh Perceval, a pseudonym 
which Lowell used occasionally at the outset 
of his career. In a letter to G. B. Loring, upon 
the appearance of the poem, Lowell says that 
his brother Robert animadverted on the irreg- 
ular metre of the Threnodia; " but as I think," 
he adds, " very unphilosophically and without 
much perception of the true rules of poetry. 
In my opinion no verse ought to be longer 
than the writer can sensibly make it. It has 
been this senseless stretching of verses to make 
them octo- or deka-syllabic or what not, that 
has brought such an abundance of useless epi- 
thets on the shoulders of poor English verse." 

Gone, gone from us ! and shall we see 
Those sibyl-leaves of destiny, 
Those calm eyes, nevermore ? 



Those deep, dark eyes so warm and bright, 

Wherein the fortunes of the man 

Lay slumbering in prophetic ligbt, 

In characters a child might scan ? 

So bright, and gone forth utterly ! 

Oh stern word — Nevermore ! 

The stars of those two gentle eyes 
Will shine no more on earth; 
Quenched are the hopes that had their 

birth, 
As we watched them slowly rise, 
Stars of a mother's fate ; 
And she would read them o'er and o'er, 
Pondering, as she sate, 
Over their dear astrology, 
Which she had conned and conned before, 
Deeming she needs must read aright 
What was writ so passing bright. 
And yet, alas ! she knew not why, 
Her voice would falter in its song, 



EARLIER POEMS 



And tears would slide from out her eye, 
Silent, as they were doing wrong. 
Oh stern word — Nevermore ! 

The tongue that scarce had learned to 
claim 
An entrance to a mother's heart 
By that dear talisman, a mother's name, 
Sleeps all forgetful of its art ! 
I loved to see the infant soul 
(How mighty in the weakness 
Of its untutored meekness !) 
Peep timidly from out its nest, 
His lips, the while, 
Fluttering with half-fledged words, 
Or hushing to a smile 
That more than words expressed, 
When his glad mother on him stole 
And snatched him to her breast ! 
Oh, thoughts were brooding in those eyes, 
That would have soared like strong-winged 

birds 
Far, far into the skies, 
Gladding the earth with song, 
And gushing harmonies, 
Had he but tarried with us long ! 
Oh stern word — Nevermore ! 

How peacefully they rest, 
Crossfolded there 
Upon his little breast, 
Those small, white hands that ne'er were 

still before, 
But ever sported with his mother's hair, 
Or the plain cross that on her breast she 

wore ! 
Her heart no more will beat 
To feel the touch of that soft palm, 
That ever seemed a new surprise 
Sending glad thoughts up to her eyes 
To bless him with their holy calm, — 
Sweet thoughts ! they made her eyes as 

sweet. 
How quiet are the hands 
That wove those pleasant bands ! 
But that they do not rise and sink 
With his calm breathing, I should think 
That he were dropped asleep. 
Alas ! too deep, too deep 
Is this his slumber ! 
Time scarce can number 
The years ere he shall wake again. 
Oh, may we see his eyelids open then ! 
Oh stern word — Nevermore ! 



As the airy gossamere, 
Floating in the sunlight clear, 
Where'er it toucheth clingeth tightly, 
Round glossy leaf or stump unsightly, 
So from his spirit wandered out 
Tendrils spreading all about, 
Knitting all things to its thrall 
With a perfect love of all: 
Oh stern word — Nevermore ! 

He did but float a little way 
Adown the stream of time, 
With dreamy eyes watching the ripples 

Or hearkening their fairy chime; 

His slender sail 

Ne'er felt the gale; 

He did but float a little way, 

And, putting to the shore 

While yet 't was early day, 

Went calmly on his way, 

To dwell with us no more ! 

No jarring did he feel, 

No grating on his shallop's keel; 

A strip of silver sand 

Mingled the waters with the land 

Where he was seen no more: 

Oh stern word — Nevermore ! 

Full short his journey was; no dust 
Of earth unto his sandals clave; 
The weary weight that old men must, 
He bore not to the grave. 
He seemed a cherub who had lost his way 
And wandered hither, so his stay 
With us was short, and 't was most meet 
That he should be no delver in earth's clod, 
Nor need to pause and cleanse his feet 
To stand before his God: 
Oh blest word — Evermore ! 



THE SIRENS 

This poem in A Year's Life is dated Nati- 
tasket, July, 1840. 

The sea is lonely, the sea is dreary, 
The sea is restless and uneasy; 
Thou seekest quiet, thou art weary, 
Wandering thou knowest not whither; — 
Our little isle is green and breezy, 
Come and rest thee ! Oh come hither, 
Come to this peaceful home of ours, 
Where evermore 



THE SIRENS 



The low west-wind creeps panting up the 


Lean over the side and see 


shore 


The leaden eye of the sidelong shark 


To be at rest among the flowers; 


Upturned patiently, 


Full of rest, the green moss lifts, 


Ever waiting there for thee: 


As the dark waves of the sea 


Look down and see those shapeless forms, 


Draw in and out of rocky rifts, 


Which ever keep their dreamless sleep 


Calling solemnly to thee 


Far down within the gloomy deep, 


With voices deep and hollow, — 


And only stir themselves in storms, 


"To the shore 


Rising like islands from beneath, 


Follow ! Oh, follow ! 


And snorting through the angry spray, 


To be at rest forevermore ! 


As the frail vessel perisheth 


Forevermore ! " 


In the whirls of their unwieldy play; 




Look down ! Look down ! 


Look how the gray old Ocean 


Upon the seaweed, slimy and dark, 


From the depth of his heart rejoices, 


That waves its arms so lank and brown, 


Heaving with a gentle motion, 


Beckoning for thee ! 


When he hears our restful voices; 


Look down beneath thy wave-worn bark 


List how he sings in an undertone, 


Into the cold depth of the sea ! 


Chiming with our melody ; 


Look down ! Look down ! 


And all sweet sounds of earth and air 


Thus, on Life's lonely sea, 


Melt into one low voice alone, 


Heareth the marinere 


That murmurs over the weary sea, 


Voices sad, from far and near, 


And seems to sing from everywhere, — 


Ever singing full of fear, 


" Here mayst thou harbor peacefully, 


Ever singing dreadfully. 


Here mayst thou rest from the aching oar; 




Turn thy curved prow ashore, 


Here all is pleasant as a dream; 


And in our green isle rest forevermore ! 


The wind scarce shaketh down the dew, 


Forevermore ! " 


The green grass floweth like a stream 


And Echo half wakes in the wooded hill, 


Into the ocean's blue; 


And, to her heart so calm and deep, 


Listen ! Oh, listen ! 


Murmurs over in her sleep, 


Here is a gush of many streams, 


Doubtfully pausing and murmuring still, 


A song of many birds, 


" Evermore ! " 


And every wish and longing seems 


Thus, on Life's weary sea, 


Lulled to a numbered flow of words, — 


Heareth the marinere 


Listen ! Oh, listen ! 


Voices sweet, from far and near, 


Here ever hum the golden bees 


Ever singing low and clear, 


Underneath full-blossomed trees, 


Ever singing longingly. 


At once with glowing fruit and flowers 

crowned; — 
So smooth the sand, the yellow sand, 


Is it not better here to be, 


Than to be toiling late and soon ? 


That thy keel will not grate as it touches 


In the dreary night to see 


the land; 


Nothing but the blood-red moon 


All around with a slumberous sound, 


Go up and down into the sea; 


The singing waves slide up the strand, 


Or, in the loneliness of day, 


And there, where the smooth, wet pebbles be, 


To see the still seals only 


The waters gurgle longingly, 


Solemnly lift their faces gray, 


As if they fain would seek the shore, 


Making it yet more lonely ? 


To be at rest from the ceaseless roar, 


Is it not better than to hear 


To be at rest forevermore, — 


Only the sliding of the wave 


Forevermore. 


Beneath the plank, and feel so near 


Thus, on Life's gloomy sea, 


A cold and lonely grave, 


Heareth the marinere 


A restless grave, where thou shalt lie 


Voices sweet, from far and near, 


Even in death unquietly ? 


Ever singing in his ear, 


Look down beneath thy wave-worn bark, 


" Here is rest and peace for thee ! " 



EARLIER POEMS 



IRENE 

The indirect as well as direct references to 
Maria White are frequent in these early poems. 
Lowell, in a letter to G. B. Loring shortly after 
this poem appeared, wrote : " Maria fills my 
ideal and I satisfy hers, and I mean to live 
as one beloved by such a woman should live. 
She is every way noble. People have called 
IrenS a beautiful piece of poetry. And so it is. 
It owes all its beauty to her." 

Hers is a spirit deep, and crystal-clear; 
Calmly beneath her earnest face it lies, 
Free without boldness, meek without a 

fear, 
Quicker to look than speak its sympathies ; 
Far down into her large and patient eyes 
I gaze, deep-drinking of the infinite, 
As, in the mid-watch of a clear, still night, 
I look into the fathomless blue skies. 

So circled lives she with Love's holy 

light, 
That from the shade of self she walketh 

free; 
The garden of her soul still keepeth she 
An Eden where the snake did never enter; 
She hath a natural, wise sincerity, 
A simple truthfulness, and these have lent 

her 
A dignity as moveless as the centre ; 
So that no influence of our earth can stir 
Her steadfast courage, nor can take away 
The holy peacefulness, which night and 

day, 
Unto her queenly soul doth minister. 

Most gentle is she ; her large charity 
(An all unwitting, childlike gift in her) 
Not freer is to give than meek to bear; 
And, though herself not unacquaint with 

care, 
Hath in her heart wide room for all that 

be,— 
Her heart that hath no secrets of its own, 
But open is as eglantine full blown. 
Cloudless forever is her brow serene, 
Speaking calm hope and trust within her, 

whence 
Welleth a noiseless spring of patience, 
That keepeth all her life so fresh, so green 
And full of holiness, that every look, 
The greatness of her woman's soul reveal- 
ing, 



Unto me bringeth blessing, and a feeling 
As when I read in God's own holy book. 

A graciousness in giving that doth make 
The small'st gift greatest, and a sense 

most meek 
Of worthiness, that doth not fear to take 
From others, but which always fears to 

speak 
Its thanks in utterance, for the giver's 

sake ; — 
The deep religion of a thankful heart, 
Which rests instinctively in Heaven's clear 

law 
With a full peace, that never can depart 
From its own steadfastness ; — a holy awe 
For holy things, — not those which men 

call holy, 
But such as are revealed to the eyes 
Of a true woman's soul bent down and 

lowly 
Before the face of daily mysteries; — 
A love that blossoms soon, but ripens 

slowly 
To the full goldenness of fruitful prime, 
Enduring with a firmness that defies 
All shallow tricks of circumstance and 

time, 
By a sure insight knowing where to cling, 
And where it clingeth never withering; — 
These are Irene"s dowry, which no fate 
Can shake from their serene, deep-builded 

state. 

In-seeing sympathy is hers, which chas- 

teneth 
No less than loveth, scorning to be bound 
With fear of blame, and yet which ever 

hasteneth 
To pour the balm of kind looks on the 

wound, 
If they be wounds which such sweet teach- 
ing makes, 
Giving itself a pang for others' sakes ; 
No want of faith, that chills with sidelong 

eye, 
Hath she ; no jealousy, no Levite pride 
That passeth by upon the other side; 
For in her soul there never dwelt a lie. 
Right from the hand of God her spirit 

came 
Unstained, and she hath ne'er forgotten 

whence 
It came, nor wandered far from thence, 
But laboreth to keep her still the same, 



WITH A PRESSED FLOWER 



Near to her place of birth, that she may 

not 
Soil her white raiment with an earthly 

spot. 

Yet sets she not her soul so steadily 
Above, that she forgets her ties to earth, 
But her whole thought would almost seem 

to be 
How to make glad one lowly human 

hearth; 
For with a gentle courage she doth strive 
In thought and word and feeling so to live 
As to make earth next heaven; and her 

heart 
Herein doth show its most exceeding worth, 
That, bearing in our frailty her just part, 
She hath not shrunk from evils of this life, 
But hath gone calmly forth into the strife, 
And all its sins and sorrows hath withstood 
With lofty strength of patient womanhood : 
For this I love her great soul more than 

all, 
That, being bound, like us, with earthly 

thrall, 
She walks so bright and heaven-like there- 
in, — 
Too wise, too meek, too womanly, to sin. 

Like a lone star through riven storm- 
clouds seen 
By sailors, tempest-tost upon the sea, 
Telling of rest and peaceful heavens nigh, 
Unto my soul her star-like soul hath been, 
Her sight as full of hope and calm to 

me; — 
For she unto herself hath builded high 
A home serene, wherein to lay her head, 
Earth's noblest thing, a Woman perfected. 



SERENADE 

From the close-shut windows gleams no 

spark, 
The night is chilly, the night is dark, 
The poplars shiver, the pine-trees moan, 
My hair by the autumn breeze is blown, 
Under thy window I sing alone, 
Alone, alone, ah woe ! alone ! 

The darkness is pressing coldly around, 
The windows shake with a lonely sound, 
The stars are hid and the night is drear, 
The heart of silence throbs in thine ear, 



In thy chamber thou sittest alone, 
Alone, alone, ah woe ! alone ! 

The world is happy, the world is wide, 
Kind hearts are beating on every side; 
Ah, why should we lie so coldly curled 
Alone in the shell of this great world ? 
Why should we any more be alone ? 
Alone, alone, ah woe ! alone ! 

Oh, 't is a bitter and dreary word, 
The saddest by man's ear ever heard ! 
We each are young, we each have a heart, 
Why stand we ever coldly apart ? 
Must we forever, then, be alone ? 
Alone, alone, ah woe ! alone ! 



WITH A PRESSED FLOWER 

This little blossom from afar 
Hath come from other lands to thine; 
For, once, its white and drooping star 
Could see its shadow in the Rhine. 

Perchance some fair-haired German maid 
Hath plucked one from the selfsame stalk, 
And numbered over, half afraid, 
Its petals in her evening walk. 

"He loves me, loves me not," she cries; 
" He loves me more than earth or heaven ! " 
And then glad tears have filled her eyes 
To find the number was uneven. 

And thou must count its petals well, 
Because it is a gift from me ; 
And the last one of all shall tell 
Something I 've often told to thee. 

But here at home, where we were born, 
Thou wilt find blossoms just as true, 
Down-bending every summer morn, 
With freshness of New England dew. 

For Nature, ever kind to love, 

Hath granted them the same sweet tongue, 

Whether with German skies above, 

Or here our granite rocks among. 



THE BEGGAR 

A beggar through the world am I, 
From place to place I wander by. 



EARLIER POEMS 



Fill up my pilgrim's scrip for me, 
For Christ's sweet sake and charity ! 

A little of thy steadfastness, 

Rounded with leafy gracefulness, 

Old oak, give me, 

That the world's blasts may round me blow, 

And I yield gently to and fro, 

While my stout-hearted trunk below 

And firm-set roots unshaken be. 

Some of thy stern, unyielding might, 
Enduring still through day and night 
Rude tempest-shock and withering blight, 
That I may keep at bay 
The changeful April sky of chance 
And the strong tide of circumstance, — 
Give me, old granite gray. 

Some of thy pensiveness serene, 

Some of thy never-dying green, 

Put in this scrip of mine, 

That griefs may fall like snow-flakes light, 

And deck me in a robe of white, 

Ready to be an angel bright, 

sweetly mournful pine. 

A little of thy merriment, 
Of thy sparkling, light content, 
Give me, my cheerful brook, 
That I may still be full of glee 
And gladsomeness, where'er I be, 
Though fickle fate hath prisoned me 
In some neglected nook. 

Ye have been very kind and good 
To me, since I 've been in the wood ; 
Ye have gone nigh to fill my heart; 
But good-by, kind friends, every one, 

1 've far to go ere set of sun; 

Of all good things I would have part, 
The day was high ere I could start, 
And so my journey 's scarce begun. 

Heaven help me ! how could I forget 

To beg of thee, dear violet ! 

Some of thy modesty, 

That blossoms here as well, unseen, 

As if before the world thou 'dst been, 

Oh, give, to strengthen me. 

MY LOVE 

Not as all other women are 
Is she that to my soul is dear; 



Her glorious fancies come from far, 
Beneath the silver evening-star, 
And yet her heart is ever near. 

Great feelings hath she of her own, 
Which lesser souls may never know; 
God giveth them to her alone, 
And sweet they are as any tone 
Wherewith the wind may choose to blow. 

Yet in herself she dwelleth not, 
Although no home were half so fair; 
No simplest duty is forgot, 
Life hath no dim and lowly spot 
That doth not in her sunshine share. 

She doeth little kindnesses, 

Which most leave undone, or despise: 

For naught that sets one heart at ease, 

And giveth happiness or peace, 

Is low-esteemed in her eyes. 

She hath no scorn of common things, 
And, though she seem of other birth, 
Round us her heart intwines and clings, 
And patiently she folds her wings 
To tread the humble paths of earth. 

Blessing she is : God made her so, 
And deeds of week-day holiness 
Fall from her noiseless as the snow, 
Nor hath she ever chanced to know 
That aught were easier than to bless. 

She is most fair, and thereunto 
Her life doth rightly harmonize; 
Feeling or thought that was not true 
Ne'er made less beautiful the blue 
Unclouded heaven of her eyes. 

She is a woman: one in whom 
The spring-time of her childish years 
Hath never lost its fresh perfume, 
Though knowing well that life hath room 
For many blights and many tears. 

I love her with a love as still 
As a broad river's peaceful might, 
Which, by high tower and lowly mill, 
Seems following its own wayward will, 
And yet doth ever flow aright. 

And, on its full, deep breast serene, 

Like quiet isles my duties lie; 

It flows around them and between, 






SUMMER STORM 



And makes them fresh and fair and green, 
Sweet homes wherein to live and die. 



SUMMER STORM 

Untremulous in the river clear, 
Toward the sky's image, hangs the imaged 
bridge ; 
So still the air that I can hear 
The slender clarion of the unseen midge; 
Out of the stillness, with a gathering 
creep, 
Like rising wind in leaves, which now de- 
creases, 
Now lulls, now swells, and all the while 
increases, 
The huddling trample of a drove of 



Tilts the loose planks, and then as gradu- 
ally ceases 
In dust on the other side ; life's emblem 
deep, 

A confused noise between two silences, 

Finding at last in dust precarious peace. 

On the wide marsh the purple-blossomed 



Soak up the sunshine; sleeps the brim- 
ming tide, 
Save when the wedge-shaped wake in si- 
lence passes 
Of some slow water-rat, whose sinuous 
glide 
Wavers the sedge's emerald shade from 

side to side; 
But up the west, like a rock-shivered surge, 
Climbs a great cloud edged with sun- 
whitened spray; 
Huge whirls of foam boil toppling o'er its 
verge, 
And falling still it seems, and yet it 
climbs alway. 

Suddenly all the sky is hid 
As with the shutting of a lid, 
One by one great drops are falling 
Doubtful and slow, 
Down the pane they are crookedly crawl- 
ing, 

And the wind breathes low; 
Slowly the circles widen on the river, 

Widen and mingle, one and all; 
Here and there the slenderer flowers 
shiver, 
Struck by an icy rain-drop's fall. 



Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter, 

The wind is gathering in the west ; 
The upturned leaves first whiten and flutter, 

Then droop to a fitful rest; 
Up from the stream with sluggish flap 

Struggles the gull and floats away; 
Nearer and nearer rolls the thunder-clap, — 
We shall not see the sun go down to-day : 
Now leaps the wind on the sleepy marsh, 

And tramples the grass with terrified feet, 
The startled river turns leaden and harsh, 
You can hear the quick heart of the 
tempest beat. 

Look ! look ! that livid flash ! 
And instantly follows the rattling thunder, 
As if some cloud-crag, split asunder, 

Fell, splintering with a ruinous crash, 
On the Earth, which crouches in silence 
under; 
And now a solid gray wall of rain 
Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile; 
For a breath's space I see the blue wood 
again, 
And ere the next heart-beat, the wind- 
hurled pile, 
That seemed but now a league aloof, 
Bursts crackling o'er the sun-parched 
roof; 
Against the windows the storm comes dash- 
ing, 
Through tattered foliage the hail tears 
crashing, 

The blue lightning flashes, 
The rapid hail clashes, 
The white waves are tumbling, 

And, in one baffled roar, 
Like the toothless sea mumbling 

A rock-bristled shore, 
The thunder is rumbling 
And crashing and crumbling, — 
Will silence return nevermore ? 

Hush ! Still as death, 
The tempest holds his breath 
As from a sudden will; 
The rain stops short, but from the eaves 
You see it drop, and hear it from the 
leaves, 
All is so bodingly still; 
Again, now, now, again 
Plashes the rain in heavy gouts, 
The crinkled lightning 
Seems ever brightening, 
And loud and long 



EARLIER POEMS 



Again the thunder shouts 
His battle-song, — 
One quivering flash, 
One wildering crash, 
Followed by silence dead and dull, 
As if the cloud, let go, 
Leapt bodily below 
To whelm the earth in one mad over- 
throw, 
And then a total lull. 

Gone, gone, so soon ! 
No more my half-dazed fancy there, 
Can shape a giant in the air, 
No more I see his streaming hair, 
The writhing portent of his form ; — 
The pale and quiet moon 
Makes her calm forehead bare, 
And the last fragments of the storm, 
Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea, 
Silent and few, are drifting over me. 



LOVE 

True Love is but a humble, low-born 

thing, 
And hath its food served up in earthen 

ware; 
It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand, 
Through the everydayness of this work- 
day world, 
Baring its tender feet to every flint, 
Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray 
From Beauty's law of plainness and con- 
tent; 
A simple, fireside thing, whose quiet smile 
Can warm earth's poorest hovel to a home; 
Which, when our autumn cometh, as it 

must, 
And life in the chill wind shivers bare and 



Shall still be blest with Indian-summer 

youth 
In bleak November, and, with thankful 

heart, 
Smile on its ample stores of garnered fruit, 
As full of sunshine to our aged eyes 
As when it nursed the blossoms of our 

spring. 
Such is true Love, which steals into the 

heart 
With feet as silent as the lightsome dawn 
That kisses smooth the rough brows of the 

dark, 



And hath its will through blissful gentle- 
ness, 

Not like a rocket, which, with passionate 
glare, 

Whirs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves 
the night 

Painfully quivering on the dazed eyes; 

A love that gives and takes, that seeth 
faults, 

Not with flaw-seeking eyes like needle 
points, 

But loving-kindly ever looks them down 

With the o'ercoming faith that still for- 
gives ; 

A love that shall be new and fresh each 
hour, 

As is the sunset's golden mystery, 

Or the sweet coming of the evening-star, 

Alike, and yet most unlike, every day, 

And seeming ever best and fairest now; 

A love that doth not kneel for what it 



But faces Truth and Beauty as their peer, 
Showing its worthiness of noble thoughts 
By a clear sense of inward nobleness; 
A love that in its object findeth not 
All grace and beauty, and enough to sate 
Its thirst of blessing, but, in all of good 
Found there, sees but the Heaven-implanted 

types 
Of good and beauty in the soul of man, 
And traces, in the simplest heart that beats, 
A family-likeness to its chosen one, 
That claims of it the rights of brotherhood. 
For love is blind but with the fleshly eye, 
That so its inner sight may be more clear; 
And outward shows of beauty only so 
Are needful at the first, as is a hand 
To guide and to uphold an infant's steps: 
Fine natures need them not: their earnest 

look 
Pierces the body's mask of thin disguise, 
And beauty ever is to them revealed, 
Behind the unshapeliest, meanest lump of 

clay, 
With arms outstretched and eager face 

ablaze, 
Yearning to be but understood and loved. 



TO PERDITA, SINGING 

Thy voice is like a fountain, 

Leaping up in clear moonshine; 
Silver, silver, ever mounting, 



THE 


MOON 9 


Ever sinking, 


With folded wings 


Without thinking, 


And white arms crost, 


To that brimful heart of thine. 


" Weep not for bygone things, 


Every sad and happy feeling, 


They are not lost: 


Thou hast had in bygone years, 


The beauty which the summer time 


Through thy lips comes stealing, stealing, 


O'er thine opening spirit shed, 


Clear and low; 


The forest oracles sublime 


All thy smiles and all thy tears 


That filled thy soul with joyous dread, 


In thy voice awaken, 


The scent of every smallest flower 


And sweetness, wove of joy and woe, 


That made thy heart sweet for an hour, 


From their teaching it hath taken: 


Yea, every holy influence, 


Feeling and music move together, 


Flowing to thee, thou knewest not whence, 


Like a swan and shadow ever 


In thine eyes to-day is seen, 


Floating on a sky-blue river 


Fresh as it hath ever been; 


In a day of cloudless weather. 


Promptings of Nature, beckonings sweet, 




Whatever led thy childish feet, 


It hath caught a touch of sadness, 


Still will linger unawares 


Yet it is not sad; 


The guiders of thy silver hairs; 


It hath tones of clearest gladness, 


Every look and every word 


Yet it is not glad ; 


Which thou givest forth to-day, 


A dim, sweet twilight voice it is 


Tell of the singing of the bird 


Where to-day's accustomed blue 


Whose music stilled thy boyish play." 


Is over-grayed with memories, 




With starry feelings quivered through. 


Thy voice is like a fountain, 




Twinkling up in sharp starlight, 


Thy voice is like a fountain 


When the moon behind the mountain 


Leaping up in sunshine bright, 


Dims the low East with faintest white, 


And I never weary counting 


Ever darkling, 


Its clear droppings, lone and single, 


Ever sparkling, 


Or when in one full gush they mingle, 


We know not if 't is dark or bright; 


Shooting in melodious light. 


But, when the great moon hath rolled round, 




And, sudden-slow, its solemn power 


Thine is music such as yields 


Grows from behind its black, clear-edged 


Feelings of old brooks and fields, 


bound, 


And, around this pent-up room, 


No spot of dark the fountain keepeth, 


Sheds a woodland, free perfume; 


But, swift as opening eyelids, leapeth 


Oh, thus forever sing to me ! 


Into a waving silver flower. 


Oh, thus forever ! 




The green, bright grass of childhood bring 




to me, 


THE MOON 


Flowing like an emerald river, 




And the bright blue skies above ! 


My soul was like the sea, 


Oh, sing them back, as fresh as ever, 


Before the moon was made, 


Into the bosom of my love, — 


Moaning in vague immensity, 


The sunshine and the merriment, 


Of its own strength afraid, 


The unsought, evergreen content, 


Unrestful and unstaid. 


Of that never cold time, 


Through every rift it foamed in vain, 


The joy, that, like a clear breeze, went 


About its earthly prison, 


Through and through the old time ! 


Seeking some unknown thing in pain, 




And sinking restless back again, 


Peace sits within thine eyes, 


For yet no moon had risen: 


With white hands crossed in joyful rest, 


Its only voice a vast dumb moan, 


While, through thy lips and face, arise 


Of utterless anguish speaking, 


The melodies from out thy breast; 


It lay unhopefully alone, 


She sits and sings, 


And lived but in an aimless seeking. 



EARLIER POEMS 



So was my soul; but when 't was full 


Thou wast waited on 


Of unrest to o'erloading, 


By the wind and sun; 


A voice of something beautiful 


The rain and the dew for thee took care; 


Whispered a dim foreboding, 


It seemed thou never couldst be more 


And yet so soft, so sweet, so low, 


fair. 


It had not more of joy than woe; 






A lily thou wast when I saw thee first, 


And, as the sea doth oft lie still, 


A lily-bud; but oh, how strange, 


Making its waters meet, 


How full of wonder was the change, 


As if by an unconscious will, 


When, ripe with all sweetness, thy full 


For the moon's silver feet, 


bloom burst ! 


So lay my soul within mine eyes 


How did the tears to my glad eyes start, 


When thou, its guardian moon, didst rise. 


When the woman-flower 




Reached its blossoming hour, 


And now, howe'er its waves above 


And I saw the warm deeps of thy golden 


May toss and seem uneaseful, 


heart! 


One stroug, eternal law of Love, 




With guidance sure and peaceful, 


Glad death may pluck thee, but never before 


As calm and natural as breath, 


The gold dust of thy bloom divine 


Moves its great deeps through life and death. 


Hath dropped from thy heart into mine, 




To quicken its faint germs of heavenly lore; 




For no breeze comes nigh thee but carries 


REMEMBERED MUSIC 


away 




Some impulses bright 


A FRAGMENT 


Of fragrance and light, 


* 


Which fall upon souls that are lone and 


Thick-rushing, like an ocean vast 


astray, 


Of bisons the far prairie shaking, 


To plant fruitful hopes of the flower of 


The notes crowd heavily and fast 


day. 


As surfs, one plunging while the last 




Draws seaward, from its foamy breaking. 


ALLEGRA 


Or in low murmurs they began, 


I would more natures were like thine, 


Rising and rising momently, 


That never casts a glance before, 


As o'er a harp iEolian 


Thou Hebe, who thy heart's bright wine 


A fitful breeze, until they ran 


So lavishly to all dost pour, 


Up to a sudden ecstasy. 


That we who drink forget to pine, 




And can but dream of bliss in store. 


And then, like minute-drops of rain 




Ringing in water silverly, 


Thou canst not see a shade in life; 


They lingering dropped and dropped again, 


With sunward instinct thou dost rise, 


Till it was almost like a pain 


And, leaving clouds below at strife, 


To listen when the next would be. 


Gazest undazzled at the skies, 




With all their blazing splendors rife, 




A songful lark with eagle's eyes. 


SONG 






Thou wast some foundling whom the 


TO M. L. 


Hours 




Nursed, laughing, with the milk of 


A lily thou wast when I saw thee first, 


Mirth; 


A lily-bud not opened quite, 


Some influence more gay than ours 


That hourly grew more pure and white, 


Hath ruled thy nature from its birth, 


By morning, and noontide, and evening 


As if thy natal stars were flowers 


nursed: 


That shook their seeds round thee on 


In all of nature thou hadst thy share ; 


earth. 4 



ODE 



And thou, to lull thine infant rest, 


Darkness or sunshine 


Wast cradled like an Indian child; 


Thy element; 


All pleasant winds from south and west 




With lullabies thine ears beguiled, 


Glorious fountain, 


Rocking thee in thine oriole's nest, 


Let my heart be 


Till Nature looked at thee and smiled. 


Fresh, changeful, constant, 




Upward, like thee ! 


Thine every fancy seems to borrow 




A sunlight from thy childish years, 




Making a golden cloud of sorrow, 


ODE 


A hope-lit rainbow out of tears, — 




Thy heart is certain of to-morrow, 


i 


Though 'yond to-day it never peers. 






In the old days of awe and keen-eyed 


I would more natures were like thine, 


wonder, 


So innocently wild and free, 


The Poet's song with blood-warm truth 


Whose sad thoughts, even, leap and shine, 


was rife; 


Like sunny wavelets in the sea, 


He saw the mysteries which circle under 


Making us mindless of the brine, 


The outward shell and skin of daily life. 


In gazing on the brilliancy. 


Nothing to him were fleeting time and 

Tci Cninn 


THE FOUNTAIN 


His soul was led by the eternal law; 
There was in him no hope of fame, no pas- 


Into the sunshine, 


sion, 


Full of the light, 


But with calm, godlike eyes he only saw. 


Leaping and flashing 


He did not sigh o'er heroes dead and 


From morn till night; 


buried, 




Chief - mourner at the Golden Age's 


Into the moonlight, 


hearse, 


Whiter than snow, 


Nor deem that souls whom Charon grim 


Waving so flower-like 


had ferried 


When the winds blow; 


Alone were fitting themes of epic verse : 




He could believe the promise of to-morrow, 


Into the starlight 


And feel the wondrous meaning of to- 


Rushing in spray, 


day; 


Happy at midnight, 


He had a deeper faith in holy sorrow 


Happy by day; 


Than the world's seeming loss could take 


Ever in motion, 


To know the heart of all things was his 


Blithesome and cheery, 


duty, 


Still climbing heavenward, 


All things did sing to him to make him 


Never aweary; 


wise, 




And, with a sorrowful and conquering 


Glad of all weathers, 


beauty, 


Still seeming best, 


The soul of all looked grandly from his 


Upward or downward, 


eyes. 


Motion thy rest; 


He gazed on all within him and without 
him, 
He watched the flowing of Time's steady 


Full of a nature 


Nothing can tame, 


tide, 


Changed every moment, 


And shapes of glory floated all about him 


Ever the same ; 


And whispered to him, and he prophe- 
sied. 
Than all men he more fearless was and 


Ceaseless aspiring, 


Ceaseless content, 


freer, 



EARLIER POEMS 



And all his brethren cried with one ac- 
cord, — 
" Behold the holy man ! Behold the Seer ! 
Him who hath spoken with the unseen 
Lord ! " 
He to his heart with large embrace had 
taken 
The universal sorrow of mankind, 
And, from that root, a shelter never shaken, 
The tree of wisdom grew with sturdy 
rind. 
He could interpret well the wondrous voices 
Which to the calm and silent spirit come ; 
He knew that the One Soul no more rejoices 
In the star's anthem than the insect's 
hum. 
He in his heart was ever meek and humble, 
And yet with kingly pomp his numbers 
ran, 
As he foresaw how all things false should 
crumble 
Before the free, uplifted soul of man: 
And, when he was made full to overflowing 
With all the loveliness of heaven and 
earth, 
Out rushed his song, like molten iron glow- 
ing, 
To show God sitting by the humblest 
hearth. 
With calmest courage he was ever ready 
To teach that action was the truth of 
thought, 
And, with strong arm and purpose firm and 
steady, 
An anchor for the drifting world he 
wrought. 
So did he make the meanest man partaker 

Of all his brother-gods unto him gave; 
All souls did reverence him and name him 
Maker, 
And when he died heaped temples on his 
grave. 
And still his deathless words of light are 
^.-^wimming 
• "Serene throughout the great deep infinite 
Of human soul, unwaning and undimming, 
To cheer and guide the mariner at night. 



But now the Poet is an empty rhymer 
Who lies with idle elbow on the grass, 

And fits his singing, like a cunning timer, 
To all men's prides and fancies as they 



Not his the song, which, in its metre holy, 
Chimes with the music of the eternal 
stars, 
Humbling the tyrant, lifting up the lowly, 
And sending sun through the soul's prison- 
bars. 
Maker no more, — oh no ! unmaker rather, 
For he unmakes who doth not all put 
forth 
The power given freely by our loving Father 
To show the body's dross, the spirit's 
worth. 
Awake ! great spirit of the ages olden ! 

Shiver the mists that hide thy starry lyre, 
And let man's soul be yet again beholden 
To thee for wings to soar to her desire. 
Oh, prophesy no more to-morrow's splendor, 
Be no more shamefaced to speak out for 
Truth, 
Lay on her altar all the gushings tender, 
The hope, the fire, the loving faith of 
youth ! 
Oh, prophesy no more the Maker's coming, 
Say not his onward footsteps thou canst 
hear 
In the dim void, like to the awful humming 
Of the great wings of some new-lighted 
sphere ! 
Oh, prophesy no more, but be the Poet ! 

This longing was but granted unto thee 
That, when all beauty thou couldst feel and 
know it, 
That beauty in its highest thou shouldst 
be. 
O thou who moanest tost with sealike long- 
ings, 
Who dimly nearest voices call on thee, 
Whose soul is overfilled with mighty throng- 
ings 
Of love, and fear, and glorious agony, 
Thou of the toil-strung hands and iron sinews 
And soul by Mother Earth with freedom 
fed, 
In whom the hero-spirit yet continues, 
The old free nature is not chained or 
dead, 
Arouse ! let thy soul break in music-thun- 
der, 
Let loose the ocean that is in thee pent, 
Pour forth thy hope, thy fear, thy love, thy 
wonder, 
And tell the age what all its signs have 
meant. 
Where'er thy wildered crowd of brethren 
jostles, 



ODE 



!3 



Where'er there lingers but a shadow of 
wrong, 
There still is need of martyrs and apos- 
tles, 
There still are texts for never-dying song: 
From age to age man's still aspiring spirit 
Finds wider scope and sees with clearer 
eyes, 
And thou in larger measure dost inherit 
What made thy great forerunners free 
and wise. 
Sit thou enthroned where the Poet's moun- 
tain 
Above the thunder lifts its silent peak, 
And roll thy songs down like a gathering 
fountain, 
They all may drink and find the rest they 
seek. 
Sing ! there shall silence grow in earth and 
heaven, 
A silence of deep awe and wondering; 
For, listening gladly, bend the angels, even, 
To hear a mortal like an angel sing. 



Among the toil-worn poor my soul is seek- 
ing 
For who shall bring the Maker's name to 
light, 
To be the voice of that almighty speaking 
Which every age demands to do it right. 
Proprieties our silken bards environ; 

He who would be the tongue of this wide 
land 
Must string his harp with chords of sturdy 
iron 
And strike it with a toil-imbrowned hand ; 
One who hath dwelt with Nature well at- 
tended, 
Who hath learnt wisdom from her mystic 
books, 
Whose soul with all her countless lives hath 
blended, 
So that all beauty awes us in his looks; 
Who not with body's waste his soul hath 
pampered, 
Who as the clear northwestern wind is 
free, 
Who walks with Form's observances un- 
hampered, 
And follows the One Will obediently; 
Whose eyes, like windows on a breezy sum- 
mit, 
Control a lovely prospect every way ; 



Who doth not sound God's sea with earthly 
plummet, 
And find a bottom still of worthless clay ; 
Who heeds not how the lower gusts are 
working, 
Knowing that one sure wind blows on 
above, 
And sees, beneath the foulest faces lurking, 
One God-built shrine of reverence and 
love; 
Who sees all stars that wheel their shining 
marches 
Around the centre fixed of Destiny, 
Where the encircling soul serene o'erarches 

The moving globe of being like a sky; 
Who feels that God and Heaven's great 
deeps are nearer 
Him to whose heart his fellow-man is 
nigh, 
Who doth not hold his soul's own freedom 
dearer 
Than that of all his brethren, low or 
high; 
Who to the Right can feel himself the truer 
For being gently patient with the wrong, 
Who sees a brother in the evil-doer, 

And finds in Love the heart's-blood of his 
song; — 
This, this is he for whom the world is wait- 
ing 
To sing the beatings of its mighty heart, 
Too long hath it been patient with the grat- 
ing 
Of scrannel-pipes, and heard it misnamed 
Art. 
To him the smiling soul of man shall listen, 
Laying awhile its crown of thorns aside, 
And once again in every eye shall glisten 

The glory of a nature satisfied. 
His verse shall have a great commanding 
motion, 
Heaving and swelling with a melody 
Learnt of the sky, the river, and the ocean, 
And all the pure, majestic things that be. 
Awake, then, thou ! we pine for thy gf eat 
presence 
To make us feel the soul once more sub- 
lime, 
We are of far too infinite an essence 

To rest contented with the lies of Time. 
Speak out ! and lo ! a hush of deepest won- 
der 
Shall sink o'er all this many-voiced scene, 
As when a sudden burst of rattling thunder 
Shatters the blueness of a sky serene. 



14 



EARLIER POEMS 



THE FATHERLAND 

Where is the true man's fatherland ? 

Is it where he by chance is born ? 

Doth not the yearning spirit scorn 
In such scant borders to be spanned ? 
Oh yes ! his fatherland must be 
As the blue heaven wide and free ! 

Is it alone where freedom is, 

Where God is God and man is man ? 
Doth he not claim a broader span 

For the soul's love of home than this ? 

Oh yes ! his fatherland must be 

As the blue heaven wide and free ! 

Where'er a human heart doth wear 
Joy's myrtle-wreath or sorrow's gyves, 
Where'er a human spirit strives 

After a life more true and fair, 

There is the true man's birthplace grand, 

His is a world-wide fatherland ! 

Where'er a single slave doth pine, 

Where'er one man may help another, — 
Thank God for such a birthright, bro- 
ther, — 

That spot of earth is thine and mine ! 

There is the true man's birthplace grand, 

His is a world-wide fatherland ! 



THE FORLORN 

The night is dark, the stinging sleet, 
Swept by the bitter gusts of air, 

Drives whistling down the lonely street, 
And glazes on the pavement bare. 

The street-lamps flare and struggle dim 
Through the gray sleet-clouds as they 
pass, 

Or, governed by a boisterous whim, 
Drop down and rustle on the glass. 

One poor, heart-broken, outcast girl 
Faces the east-wind's searching flaws, 

And, as about her heart they whirl, 
Her tattered cloak more tightly draws. 

The flat brick walls look cold and bleak, 
Her bare feet to the sidewalk freeze; 

Yet dares she not a shelter seek, 

Though faint with hunger and disease. 



The sharp storm cuts her forehead bare, 
And, piercing through her garments thin, 

Beats on her shrunken breast, and there 
Makes colder the cold heart within. 

She lingers where a ruddy glow 

Streams outward through an open shut- 
ter, 
Adding more bitterness to woe, 

More loneliness to desertion utter. 

One half the cold she had not felt 
Until she saw this gush of light 

Spread warmly forth, and seem to melt 
Its slow way through the deadening night. 

She hears a woman's voice within, 

Singing sweet words her childhood knew, 

And years of misery and sin 

Furl off, and leave her heaven blue. 

Her freezing heart, like one who sinks 
Outwearied in the drifting snow, 

Drowses to deadly sleep and thinks 
No longer of its hopeless woe : 

Old fields, and clear blue summer days, 
Old meadows, green with grass, and trees 

That shimmer through the trembling haze 
And whiten in the western breeze, 

Old faces, all the friendly past 

Rises within her heart again, 
And sunshine from her childhood cast 

Makes summer of the icy rain. 

Enhaloed by a mild, warm glow, 

From man's humanity apart, 
She hears old footsteps wandering slow 

Through the lone chambers of the heart. 

Outside the porch before the door, 
Her cheek upon the cold, hard stone, 

She lies, no longer foul and poor, 
No longer dreary and alone. 

Next morning something heavily 

Against the opening door did weigh, 

And there, from sin and sorrow free, 
A woman on the threshold lay. 

A smile upon the wan lips told 

That she had found a calm release, 

And that, from out the want and cold, 
The song had borne her soul in peace. 



THE HERITAGE 



For, whom the heart of man shuts out, 


To make the charmed body 


Sometimes the heart of God takes in, 


Almost like spirit be, 


And fences them all round about 


And give it some faint glimpses 


With silence mid the world's loud din; 


Of immortality ! 


And one of his great charities 




Is Music, and it doth not scorn 


A PRAYER 


To close the lids upon the eyes 




Of the polluted and forlorn; 


God ! do not let my loved one die, 




But rather wait until the time 


Far was she from her childhood's home, 


That I am grown in purity 


Farther in guilt had wandered thence, 


Enough to enter thy pure clime, 


Yet thither it had bid her come 


Then take me, I will gladly go, 


To die in maiden innocence. 


So that my love remain below ! 




Oh, let her stay ! She is by birth 


MIDNIGHT 


What I through death must learn to be ; 




We need her more on our poor earth 


The moon shines white and silent 


Than thou canst need in heaven with thee : 


On the mist, which, like a tide 


She hath her wings already, I 


Of some enchanted ocean, 


Must burst this earth-shell ere 1 fly. 


O'er the wide marsh doth glide, 




Spreading its ghost-like billows 


Then, God, take me ! We shall be near, 


Silently far and wide. 


More near than ever, each to each: 




Her angel ears will find more clear 


A vague and starry magic 


My heavenly than my earthly speech; 


Makes all things mysteries, 


And still, as I draw nigh to thee, 


And lures the earth's dumb spirit 


Her soul and mine shall closer be. 


Up to the longing skies; 




I seem to hear dim whispers, 




And tremulous replies. 


THE HERITAGE 


The fireflies o'er the meadow 


The rich man's son inherits lands, 


In pulses come and go ; 


And piles of brick and stone, and gold, 


The elm-trees' heavy shadow 


And he inherits soft white hands, 


Weighs on the grass below; 


And tender flesh that fears the cold, 


And faintly from the distance 


Nor dares to wear a garment old; 


The dreaming cock doth crow. 


A heritage, it seems to me, 




One scarce would wish to hold in fee. 


All things look strange and mystic, 




The very bushes swell 


The rich man's son inherits cares; 


And take wild shapes and motions, 


The bank may break, the factory burn, 


As if beneath a spell; 


A breath may burst his bubble shares, 


They seem not the same lilacs 


And soft white hands could hardly earn 


From childhood known so well. 


A living that would serve his turn; 




A heritage, it seems to me, 


The snow of deepest silence 


One scarce would wish to hold in fee. 


O'er everything doth fall, 




So beautiful and quiet, 


The rich man's son inherits wants, 


And yet so like a pall; 


His stomach craves for dainty fare; 


As if all life were ended, 


With sated heart, he hears the pants 


And rest were come to all. 


Of toiling hinds with brown arms bare, 




And wearies in his easy-chair; 


wild and wondrous midnight, 


A heritage, it seems to me, 


There is a might in thee 


One scarce would wish to hold in fee. 



i6 



EARLIER 



What doth the poor man's son inherit ? 

Stout muscles and a sinewy heart, 
A hardy frame, a hardier spirit; 

King of two hands, he does his part 

In every useful toil and art; 
A heritage, it seems to me, 
A king might wish to hold in fee. 

What doth the poor man's son inherit ? 
Wishes o'erjoyed with humble things, 

A rank adjudged by toil-won merit, 

Content that from employment springs, 
A heart that in his labor sings; 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

A king might wish to hold in fee. 

What doth the poor man's son inherit ? 
A patience learned of being poor, 

Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it, 
A fellow-feeling that is sure 
To make the outcast bless his door; 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

A king might wish to hold in fee. 

O rich man's son ! there is a toil 
That with all others level stands; 

Large charity doth never soil, 

But only whiten, soft white hands; 
This is the best crop from thy lands, 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

Worth being rich to hold in fee. 

O poor man's son ! scorn not thy state ; 
There is worse weariness than thine, 

In merely being rich and great; 
Toil only gives the soul to shine, 
And makes rest fragrant and benign; 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

Worth being poor to hold in fee. 

Both, heirs to some six feet of sod, 
Are equal in the earth at last; 

Both, children of the same dear God, 
Prove title to your heirship vast 
By record of a well-filled past ; 

A heritage, it seems to me, 

Well worth a life to hold in fee. 



THE ROSE: A BALLAD 



In his tower sat the poet 
Gazing on the roaring sea, 



" Take this rose," he sighed, " and throw it 

Where there 's none that loveth me. 
On the rock the billow bursteth 

And sinks back into the seas, 
But in vain my spirit thirsteth 

So to burst and be at ease. 
Take, O sea ! the tender blossom 

That hath lain against my breast; 
On thy black and angry bosom 

It will find a surer rest. 
Life is vain, and love is hollow, 

Ugly death stands there behind, 
Hate and scorn and hunger follow 

Him that toileth for his kind." 
Forth into the night he hurled it, 

And with bitter smile did mark 
How the surly tempest whirled it 

Swift into the hungry dark. 
Foam and spray drive back to leeward, 

And the gale, with dreary moan, 
Drifts the helpless blossom seaward, 

Through the breakers all alone. 



Stands a maiden, on the morrow, 

Musing by the wave-beat strand, 
Half in hope and half in sorrow, 

Tracing words upon the sand: 
" Shall I ever then behold him 

Who hath been my life so long, 
Ever to this sick heart fold him, 

Be the spirit of his song ? 
Touch not, sea, the blessed letters 

I have traced upon thy shore. 
Spare his name whose spirit fetters 

Mine with love forevermore ! " 
Swells the tide and overflows it, 

But, with omen pure and meet, 
Brings a little rose, and throws it 

Humbly at the maiden's feet. 
Full of bliss she takes the token, 

And, upon her snowy breast, 
Soothes the ruffled petals broken 

With the ocean's fierce unrest. 
" Love is thine, O heart ! and surely 

Peace shall also be thine own, 
For the heart that trusteth purely 

Never long can pine alone." 



In his tower sits the poet, 

Blisses new and strange to him 

Fill his heart and overflow it 
With a wonder sweet and dim. 



ROSALINE 



r 7 



Up the beach the ocean slideth 

With a whisper of delight, 
And the moon in silence glideth 

Through the peaceful blue of night. 
Rippling o'er the poet's shoulder 

Flows a maiden's golden hair, 
Maiden lips, with love grown bolder, 

Kiss his moon-lit forehead bare. 
" Life is joy, and love is power, 

Death all fetters doth unbind, 
Strength and wisdom only flower 

When we toil for all our kind. 
Hope is truth, — the future giveth 

More than present takes away, 
And the soul forever liveth 

Nearer God from day to day." 
Not a word the maiden uttered, 

Fullest hearts are slow to speak, 
But a withered rose-leaf fluttered 

Down upon the poet's cheek. 



SONG 

Violet ! sweet violet ! 
Thine eyes are full of tears ; 
Are they wet 
Even yet 
With the thought of other years ? 
Or with gladness are they full, 
For the night so beautiful, 
And longing for those far-off spheres ? 

Loved one of my youth thou wast, 
Of my merry youth, 
And I see, 
Tearfully, 
All the fair and sunny past, 
All its openness and truth, 
Ever fresh and green in thee 
As the moss is in the sea. 

Thy little heart, that hath with love 
Grown colored like the sky above, 
On which thou lookest ever, — 
Can it know 
All the woe 
Of hope for what returneth never, 
All the sorrow and the longing 
To these hearts of ours belonging ? 

Out on it ! no foolish pining 
For the sky 
Dims thine eye, 
Or for the stars so calmly shining; 



Like thee let this soul of mine 
Take hue from that wherefor I long, 
Self-stayed and high, serene and strong, 
Not satisfied with hoping — but divine. 

Violet ! dear violet ! 

Thy blue eyes are only wet 
With joy and love of Him who sent thee, 
And for the fulfilling sense 
Of that glad obedience 
Which made thee all that Nature meant 
thee! 

ROSALINE 

Thou look'dst on me all yesternight, 
Thine eyes were blue, thy hair was bright 
As when we murmured our troth-plight 
Beneath the thick stars, Rosaline ! 
Thy hair was braided on thy head, 
As on the day we two were wed, 
Mine eyes scarce knew if thou wert dead, 
But my shrunk heart knew, Rosaline ! 

The death-watch ticked behind the wall, 
The blackness rustled like a pall, 
The moaning wind did rise and fall 
Among the bleak pines, Rosaline ! 
My heart beat thickly in mine ears: 
The lids may shut out fleshly fears, 
But still the spirit sees and hears, 
Its eyes are lidless, Rosaline ! 

A wildness rushing suddenly, 

A knowing some ill shape is nigh, 

A wish for death, a fear to die, 

Is not this vengeance, Rosaline ? 

A loneliness that is not lone, 

A love quite withered up and gone, 

A strong soul ousted from its throne, 

What wouldst thou further, Rosaline ? 

'T is drear such moonless nights as these, 
Strange sounds are out upon the breeze, 
And the leaves stiver in the trees, 
And then thou comest, Rosaline ! 
I seem to hear the mourners go, 
With long black garments trailing slow, 
And plumes anodding to and fro, 
As once I heard them, Rosaline ! 

Thy shroud is all of snowy white, 
And, in the middle of the night, 
Thou standest moveless and upright, 
Gazing upon me, Rosaline ! 



EARLIER POEMS 



There is no sorrow in thine eyes, 
But evermore that meek surprise, — 

God ! thy gentle spirit tries 
To deem me guiltless, Rosaline ! 

Above thy grave the robin sings, 

And swarms of bright and happy things 

Flit all about with sunlit wings, 

But I am cheerless, Rosaline ! 

The violets in the hillock toss, 

The gravestone is o'ergrown with moss; 

For nature feels not any loss, 

But I am cheerless, Rosaline ! 

1 did not know when thou wast dead; 
A blackbird whistling overhead 
Thrilled through my brain; I would have 

fled, 
But dared not leave thee, Rosaline ! 
The sun rolled down, and very soon, 
Like a great fire, the awful moon 
Rose, stained with blood, and then a swoon 
Crept chilly o'er me, Rosaline ! 

The stars came out; and, one by one, 
Each angel from his silver throne 
Looked down and saw what I had done: 
I dared not hide me, Rosaline ! 
I crouched; I feared thy corpse would cry 
Against me to God's silent sky, 
I thought I saw the blue lips try 
To utter something, Rosaline ! 

I waited with a maddened grin 

To hear that voice all icy thin 

Slide forth and tell my deadly sin 

To hell and heaven, Rosaline ! 

But no voice came, and then it seemed, 

That, if the very corpse had screamed, 

The sound like sunshine glad had streamed 

Through that dark stillness, Rosaline ! 

And then, amid the silent night, 

I screamed with horrible delight, 

And in my brain an awful light 

Did seem to crackle, Rosaline ! 

It is my curse ! sweet memories fall 

From me like snow, and only all 

Of that one night, like cold worms, crawl 

My doomed heart over, Rosaline ! 

Why wilt thou haunt me with thine eyes, 
Wherein such blessed memories, 
Such pitying forgiveness lies, 
Than hate more bitter, Rosaline ! 



Woe 's me ! I know" that love so high 
As thine, true soul, could never die, 
And with mean clay in churchyard lie, — 
Would it might be so, Rosaline ! 



A REQUIEM 

Ay, pale and silent maiden, 

Cold as thou liest there, 
Thine was the sunniest nature 

That ever drew the air; 
The wildest and most wayward, 

And yet so gently kind, 
Thou seemedst but to body 

A breath of summer wind. 

Into the eternal shadow 

That girds our life around, 
Into the infinite silence 

Wherewith Death's shore is bound, 
Thou hast gone forth, beloved ! 

And I were mean to weep, 
That thou hast left Life's shallows, 

And dost possess the Deep. 

Thou liest low and silent, 

Thy heart is cold and still, 
Thine eyes are shut forever, 

And Death hath had his will; 
He loved and would have taken, 

I loved and would have kept, 
We strove, — and he was stronger, 

And I have never wept. 

Let him possess thy body, 

Thy soul is still with me, 
More sunny and more gladsome 

Than it was wont to be: 
Thy body was a fetter 

That bound me to the flesh, 
Thank God that it is broken, 

And now I live afresh ! 

Now I can see thee clearly; 

The dusky cloud of clay, 
That hid thy starry spirit, 

Is rent and blown away: 
To earth I give thy body, 

Thy spirit to the sky, 
I saw its bright wings growing, 

And knew that thou must fly. 

Now I can love thee truly, 
For nothing comes between 



SONNETS 



The senses and the spirit, 
The seen and the unseen; 

Lifts the eternal shadow, 
The silence bursts apart, 

And the soul's boundless future 
Is present in my heart. 



A PARABLE . 

Worn and footsore was the Prophet, 
When he gained the holy hill; 

" God has left the earth," he murmured, 
" Here his presence lingers still. 

" God of all the olden prophets, 

Wilt thou speak with men no more ? 

Have I not as truly served thee 
As thy chosen ones of yore ? 

" Hear me, guider of my fathers, 

Lo ! a humble heart is mine ; 
By thy mercy I beseech thee 

Grant thy servant but a sign ! " 

Bowing then his head, he listened 

For an answer to his prayer; 
No loud burst of thunder followed, 

Not a murmur stirred the air: 

But the tuft of moss before him 

Opened while he waited yet, 
And, from out the rock's hard bosom, 

Sprang a tender violet. 

"God ! I thank thee," said the Prophet; 

" Hard of heart and blind was I, 
Looking to the holy mountain 

For the gift of prophecy. 

" Still thou speakest with thy children 

Freely as in eld sublime; 
Humbleness, and love, and patience, 

Still give empire over time. 

" Had I trusted in my nature, , 
And had faith in lowly things, 

Thou thyself wouldst then have sought me, 
And set free my spirit's wings. 

" But I looked for signs and wonders, 
That o'er men should give me sway; 

Thirsting to be more than mortal, 
I was even less than clay. 



" Ere I entered on my journey, 
As I girt my loins to start, 
Ran to me my little daughter, 
The beloved of my heart; 

" In her hand she held a flower, 
Like to this as like may be, 
Which, beside my very threshold, 
She had plucked and brought to me.' 



SONG 

O moonlight deep and tender, 

A year and more agone, 
Your mist of golden splendor 

Round my betrothal shone ! 

O elm-leaves dark and dewy, 

The very same ye seem, 
The low wind trembles through ye, 

Ye murmur in my dream ! 

O river, dim with distance, 

Flow thus forever by, 
A part of my existence 

Within your heart doth lie ! 

O stars, ye saw our meeting, 
Two beings and one soul, 

Two hearts so madly beating 
To mingle and be whole ! 

O happy night, deliver 

Her kisses back to me, 
Or keep them all, and give her 

A blissful dream of me ! 



SONNETS 



TO A. C. L. 

A. C. L. was Mrs. Anna Cabot Lowell (Mrs. 
Charles Lowell) , the wife of the eldest brother 
of the poet, and mother of those gallant bro- 
thers, Charles and James, who fell in the war 
for the union, and to whom Lowell refers in 
the tenth of the second series of Bigloiv Papers. 

Through suffering and sorrow thou hast 

passed 
To show us what a woman true may be: 
They have not taken sympathy from thee, 
Nor made thee any other than thou wast, 



EARLIER POEMS 



Save as some tree, which, in a sudden 

blast, 
Sheddeth those blossoms, that are weakly 

grown, 
Upon the air, but keepeth every one 
Whose strength gives warrant of good fruit 

at last: 
So thou hast shed some blooms of gayety, 
But never one of steadfast cheerfulness; 
Nor hath thy knowledge of adversity 
Robbed thee of any faith in happiness, 
But rather cleared thine inner eyes to see 
How many simple ways there are to bless. 



What were I, Love, if I were stripped of 

thee, 
If thine eyes shut me out whereby I live, 
Thou, who unto my calmer soul dost give 
Knowledge, and Truth, and holy Mystery, 
Wherein Truth mainly lies for those who 

see 
Beyond the earthly and the fugitive, 
Who in the grandeur of the soul believe, 
And only in the Infinite are free ? 
Without thee I were naked, bleak, and 

bare 
As yon dead cedar on the sea-cliff's brow; 
And Nature's teachings, which come to me 

now, 
Common and beautiful as light and air, 
Would be as fruitless as a stream which still 
Slips through the wheel of some old ruined 

mill. 



I would not have this perfect love of ours 
Grow from a single root, a single stem, 
Bearing no goodly fruit, but only flowers 
That idly hide life's iron diadem: 
It should grow alway like that Eastern 

tree 
Whose limbs take root and spread forth 

constantly; 
That love for one, from which there doth 

not spring 
Wide love for all, is but a worthless thing. 
Not in another world, as poets prate, 
Dwell we apart above the tide of things, 
High floating o'er earth's clouds on faery 

wings ; 
But our pure love doth ever elevate 
Into a holy bond of brotherhood 
All earthly things, making them pure and 

good. 



" For this true nobleness I seek in vain, 

In woman and in man I find it not; 

I almost weary of my earthly lot, 

My life-springs are dried up with burning 

pain." 
Thou find'st it not ? I pray thee look 

again, 
Look inward through the depths of thine 

own soul. 
How is it with thee ? Art thou sound and 

whole ? 
Doth narrow search show thee no earthly 

stain ? 
Be noble ! and the nobleness that lies 
In other men, sleeping, but never dead, 
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own; 
Then wilt thou see it gleam in many eyes, 
Then will pure light around thy path be 

shed, 
And thou wilt nevermore be sad and lone. 



TO THE SPIRIT OF KEATS 

Great soul, thou sittest with me in my 

room, 
Uplifting me with thy vast, quiet eyes, 
On whose full orbs, with kindly lustre, lies 
The twilight warmth of ruddy ember- 
gloom: 
Thy clear, strong tones will oft bring sud- 
den bloom 
Of hope secure, to him who lonely cries, 
Wrestling with the young poet's agonies, 
Neglect and scorn, which seem a certain 

doom: 
Yes ! the few words which, like great 

thunder-drops, 
Thy large heart down to earth shook doubt- 
fully, 
Thrilled by the inward lightning of its 

might, 
Serene and pure, like gushing joy of light, 
Shall track the eternal chords of Destiny, 
After the moon-led pulse of ocean stops. 



Great Truths are portions of the soul of 

man; 
Great souls are portions of Eternity; 
Each drop of blood that e'er through true 

heart ran 
With lofty message, ran for thee and me ; 



SONNETS 



For God's law, since the starry song began, 
Hath been, and still forevermore must be, 
That every deed which shall outlast Time's 

span 
Must spur the soul to be erect and free ; 
Slave is no word of deathless lineage 

sprung; 
Too many noble souls have thought and 

died, 
Too many mighty poets lived and sung, 
And our good Saxon, from lips purified 
With martyr-fire, throughout the world 

hath rung 
Too long to have God's holy cause denied. 



I ASK not for those thoughts, that sudden 

leap 
From being's sea, like the isle-seeming 

Kraken, 
With whose great rise the ocean all is 

shaken 
And a heart-tremble quivers through the 

deep; 
Give me that growth which some perchance 

deem sleep, 
Wherewith the steadfast coral-stems uprise, 
Which, by the toil of gathering energies, 
Their upward way into clear sunshine 

keep, 
Until, by Heaven's sweetest influences, 
Slowly and slowly spreads a speck of green 
Into a pleasant island in the seas, 
Where, mid tall palms, the cane-roofed 

home is seen, 
And wearied men shall sit at sunset's hour, 
Hearing the leaves and loving God's dear 

power. 



TO M. W., ON HER BIRTHDAY 

Maiden, when such a soul as thine is born, 
The morning - stars their ancient music 

make, 
And, joyful, once again their song awake, 
Long silent now with melancholy scorn; 
And thou, not mindless of so blest a morn, 
By no least deed its harmony shalt break, 
But shalt to that high chime thy footsteps 

take, 
Through life's most darksome passes un- 

f orlorn ; 
Therefore from thy pure faith thou shalt 

not fall, 



Therefore shalt thou be ever fair and free, 

And in thine every motion musical 

As summer air, majestic as the sea, 

A mystery to those who creep and crawl 

Through Time, and part it from Eternity. 



My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst 

die; 
Albeit I ask no fairer life than this, 
Whose numbering-clock is still thy gentle 

kiss, 
While Time and Peace with hands en- 
locked fly; 
Yet care I not where in Eternity 
We live and love, well knowing that there is 
No backward step for those who feel the 

bliss 
Of Faith as their most lofty yearnings 

high: 
Love hath so purified my being's core, 
Meseems I scarcely should be startled, 

even, 
To find, some morn, that thou hadst gone 

before ; 
Since, with thy love, this knowledge too 

was given, 
Which each calm day doth strengthen 

more and more, 
That they who love are but one step from 

Heaven. 



I cannot think that thou shouldst pass 

away, 
Whose life to mine is an eternal law, 
A piece of nature that can have no flaw, 
A new and certain sunrise every day; 
But, if thou art to be another ray 
About the Sun of Life, and art to live 
Free from what part of thee was fugitive, 
The debt of Love I will more fully pay, 
Not downcast with the thought of thee so 

high, 
But rather raised to be a nobler man, 
And more divine in my humanity, 
As knowing that the waiting eyes which 

scan 
My life are lighted by a purer being, 
And ask high, calm-browed deeds, with it 

agreeing. 

XI 

There never yet was flower fair in vain, 
Let classic poets rhyme it as they will; 
The seasons toil that it may blow again, 



EARLIER POEMS 



And summer's heart doth feel its every ill; 

Nor is a true soul ever born for naught; 

Wherever any such hath lived and died, 

There hath been something for true free- 
dom wrought, 

Some bulwark levelled on the evil side: 

Toil on, then, Greatness ! thou art in the 
right, 

However narrow souls may call thee 
wrong; 

Be as thou wouldst be in thine own clear 
sight, 

And so thou shalt be in the world's erelong; 

For worldlings cannot, struggle as they 
may, 

From man's great soul one great thought 
hide away. 



SUB PONDERE CRESCIT 

The hope of Truth grows stronger, day by 

day; 
I hear the soul of Man around me waking, 
Like a great sea, its frozen fetters break- 

. in 2' 
And flinging up to heaven its sunlit spray, 

Tossing huge continents in scornful play, 
And crushing them, with din of grinding 

thunder, 
That makes old emptinesses stare in won- 
der; 
The memory of a glory passed away 
Lingers in every heart, as, in the shell, 
Resounds the bygone freedom of the sea, 
And every hour new signs of promise tell, 
That the great soul shall once again be free, 
For high, and yet more high, the murmurs 

swell 
Of inward strife for truth and liberty. 



Beloved, in the noisy city here, 

The thought of thee can make all turmoil 

cease; 
Around my spirit, folds thy spirit clear 
Its still, soft arms, and circles it with 

peace ; 
There is no room for any doubt or fear 
In souls so overfilled with love's increase, 
There is no memory of the bygone year 
But growth in heart's and spirit's perfect 

ease: 
How hath our love, half nebulous at first, 



Rounded itself into a full-orbed sun ! 
How have our lives and wills (as haply erst 
They were, ere this forgetfulness begun) 
Through all their earthly distances out- 
burst, 
And melted, like two rays of light in one ! 



ON READING WORDSWORTH'S SONNETS 
IN DEFENCE OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 

These sonnets, XIV-XIX, -when printed in 
The Democratic Review for May, 1842, bore 
merely the title Sonnets. 

As the broad ocean endlessly upheaveth, 
With the majestic beating of his heart, 
The mighty tides, whereof its rightful part 
Each sea-wide bay and little weed receiv- 

eth, 
So, through his soul who earnestly believeth, 
Life from the universal Heart doth flow, 
Whereby some conquest of the eternal 

Woe, 
By instinct of God's nature, he achieveth: 
A fuller pulse of this all-powerful beauty 
Into the poet's gulf-like heart doth tide, 
And he more keenly feels the glorious duty 
Of serving Truth, despised and crucified, — 
Happy, unknowing sect or creed, to rest, 
And feel God flow forever through his 

breast. 



THE SAME CONTINUED 

Once hardly in a cycle blossometh 

A flower-like soul ripe with the seeds of 

song, 
A spirit foreordained to cope with wrong, 
Whose divine thoughts are natural as 

breath, 
Who the old Darkness thickly scattereth 
With starry words, that shoot prevailing 

light 
Into the deeps, and wither, with the blight 
Of serene Truth, the coward heart of 

Death: 
Woe, if such spirit thwart its errand high, 
And mock with lies the longing soul of 

man ! 
Yet one age longer must true Culture lie, 
Soothing her bitter fetters as she can, 
Until new messages of love outstart 
At the next beating of the infinite Heart. 



SONNETS 



23 



THE SAME CONTINUED 

The love of all things springs from love of 

one; 
Wider the soul's horizon hourly grows, 
And over it with fuller glory flows 
The sky-like spirit of God; a hope begun 
In doubt and darkness 'neath a fairer sun 
Cometh to fruitage, if it be of Truth; 
And to the law of meekness, faith, and 

ruth, 
By inward sympathy, shall all be won : 
This thou shouldst know, who, from the 

painted feature 
Of shifting Fashion, couldst thy brethren 

turn 
Unto the love of ever-youthful Nature, 
And of a beauty fadeless and eterne ; 
And always 't is the saddest sight to see 
An old man faithless in Humanity. 

XVII 

THE SAME CONTINUED 

A poet cannot strive for despotism; 
His harp falls shattered ; for it still must be 
The instinct of great spirits to be free, 
And the sworn foes of cunning barbarism: 
He who has deepest searched the wide 



Of that life-giving Soul which men call 

fate, 
Knows that to put more faith in lies and 

hate 
Than truth and love is the true atheism: 
Upward the soul forever turns her eyes: 
The next hour always shames the hour be- 
fore; 
One beauty, at its highest, prophesies 
That by whose side it shall seem mean and 

poor; 
No Godlike thing knows aught of less and 

less, 
But widens to the boundless Perfectness. 

XVIII 
THE SAME CONTINUED 

Therefore think not the Past is wise 

alone, 
For Yesterday knows nothing of the Best, 
And thou shalt love it only as the nest 
Whence glory-winged things to Heaven 

have flown: 



To the great Soul only are all things 

known; 
Present and future are to her as past, 
While she in glorious madness doth fore- 
cast 
That perfect bud, which seems a flower 

full-blown 
To each new Prophet, and yet always opes 
Fuller and fuller with each day and hour, 
Heartening the soul with odor of fresh 

hopes, 
And longings high, and gushings of wide 

power, 
Yet never is or shall be fully blown 
Save in the forethought of the Eternal 
One. 



THE SAME CONCLUDED 

Far 'yond this narrow parapet of Time, 
With eyes uplift, the poet's soul should 

look 
Into the Endless Promise, nor should brook 
One prying doubt to shake his faith sub- 
lime; 
To him the earth is ever in her prime 
And dewiness of morning; he can see 
Good lying hid, from all eternity, 
Within the teeming womb of sin and 

crime ; 
His soul should not be cramped by any bar, 
His nobleness should be so Godlike high, 
That his least deed is perfect as a star, 
His common look majestic as the sky, 
And all o'erflooded with a light from far, 
Undimmed by clouds of weak mortality. 



TO M. o. S. 
Mary Orne Story, sister to William Wetmore 
Story, afterward married to George Tieknor 
Curtis. 

Mary, since first I knew thee, to this hour, 

My love hath deepened, with my wiser 
sense 

Of what in Woman is to reverence; 

Thy clear heart, fresh as e'er was forest- 
flower, 

Still opens more to me its beauteous 
dower; — 

But let praise hush, — Love asks no 
evidence 

To prove itself well-placed; we know not 
whence 



24 



EARLIER POEMS 



It gleans the straws that thatch its humble 

bower : 
We can but say we found it in the heart, 
Spring of all sweetest thoughts, arch foe of 

blame, 
Sower of flowers in the dusty mart, 
Pure vestal of the poet's holy flame, — 
This is enough, and we have done our part 
If we but keep it spotless as it came. 



Our love is not a fading, earthly flower: 
Its winged seed dropped down from Para- 
dise, 
And, nursed by day and night, by sun and 

shower, 
Doth momently to fresher beauty rise : 
To us the leafless autumn is not bare, 
Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty 

green. 
Our summer hearts make summer's ful- 
ness, where 
No leaf, or bud, or blossom may be seen : 
For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie, 
Love, — whose forgetfulness is beauty's 

death, 
Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I 
Into the infinite freedom openeth, 
And makes the body's dark and narrow 

grate 
The wide-flung leaves of Heaven's own 
palace-gate. 



IN ABSENCE 

These rugged, wintry days I scarce could 

bear, 
Did I not know that, in the early spring, 
When wild March winds upon their er- 
rands sing, 
Thou wouldst return, bursting on this still 

air, 
Like those same winds, when, startled from 

their lair, 
They hunt up violets, and free swift brooks 
From icy cares, even as thy clear looks 
Bid my heart bloom, and sing, and break 

all care: 
When drops with welcome rain the April 

day, 
My flowers shall find their April in thine 

eyes, 
Save there the rain in dreamy clouds doth 

stay, 



As loath to fall out of those happy skies; 
Yet sure, my love, thou art most like to 

May, 
That comes with steady sun when April 

dies. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 

He stood upon the world's broad thresh- 
old; wide 
The din of battle and of slaughter rose; 
He saw God stand upon the weaker side, 
That sank in seeming loss before its foes: 
Many there were who made great haste 

and sold 
Unto the cunning enemy their swords, 
He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, 

and gold, 
And, underneath their soft and flowery 

words, 
Heard the cold serpent hiss ; therefore he 

went 
And humbly joined him to the weaker 

part, 
Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content 
So he could be the nearer to God's heart, 
And feel its solemn pulses sending blood 
Through all the widespread veins of end- 
less good. 



THE STREET 

They pass me by like shadows, crowds on 

crowds, 
Dim ghosts of men, that hover to and fro, 
Hugging their bodies round them like thin 

shrouds 
Wherein their souls were buried long ago: 
They trampled on their youth, and faith, 

and love, 
They cast their hope of human-kind away, 
With Heaven's clear messages they madly 

strove, 
And conquered, — and their spirits turned 

to clay: 
Lo! how they wander round the world, 

their grave, 
Whose ever-gaping maw by such is fed, 
Gibbering at living men, and idly rave, 
" We only truly live, but ye are dead." 
Alas ! poor fools, the anointed eye may 

trace 
A dead soul's epitaph in every face ! 



L'ENVOI 



2 5 



I grieve not that ripe Knowledge takes 

away 
The charm that Nature to nay childhood 

wore, 
For, with that insight, cometh, day by clay, 
A greater bliss than wonder was before ; 
The real doth not clip the poet's wings, — 
To win the secret of a weed's plain heart 
Reveals some clue to spiritual things, 
And stumbling guess becomes firm-footed 

art: 
Flowers are not flowers unto the poet's 

eyes, 
Their beauty thrills him by an inward 

sense; 
He knows that outward seemings are but 

lies, 
Or, at the most, but earthly shadows, 

whence 
The soul that looks within for truth may 

guess 
The presence of some wondrous heavenli- 

ness. 

XXVI 

TO J. R. GIDDINGS 

Giddings, far rougher names than thine 

have grown 
Smoother than honey on the lips of men; 
And thou shalt aye be honorably known, 
As one who bravely used his tongue and pen, 
As best befits a freeman, — even for those 
To whom our Law's unblushing front de- 
nies 
A right to plead against the lifelong woes 
Which are the Negro's glimpse of Free- 
dom's skies: 
Fear nothing, and hope all things, as the 

Right 
Alone may do securely; every hour 
The thrones of Ignorance and ancient 

Night 
Lose somewhat of their long -usurped 

power, 
And Freedom's lightest word can make 

them shiver 
With a base dread that clings to them for- 



I thought our love at full, but I did err; 
Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; I 
could not see 



That sorrow in our happy world must be 
Love's deepest spokesman and interpreter: 
But, as a mother feels her child first stir 
Under her heart, so felt I instantly 
Deep in my soul another bond to thee 
Thrill with that life we saw depart from 

her; 
O mother of our angel child ! twice dear ! 
Death knits as well as parts, and still, I 

wis, 
Her tender radiance shall infold us here, 
Even as the light, borne up by inward bliss, 
Threads the void glooms of space without 

a fear, 
To print on farthest stars her pitying kiss. 



L'ENVOI 

Whether my heart hath wiser grown or 

not, 
In these three years, since I to thee in- 
scribed, 
Mine own betrothed, the firstlings of my 

muse, — 
Poor windfalls of unripe experience, 
Young buds plucked hastily by childish 

hands 
Not patient to await more full-blown flow- 
ers, — 
At least it hath seen more of life and men, 
And pondered more, and grown a shade 

more sad; 
Yet with no loss of hope or settled trust 
In the benignness of that Providence 
Which shapes from out our elements awry 
The grace and order that we wonder at, 
The mystic harmony of right and wrong, 
Both working out His wisdom and our 

good: 
A trust, Beloved, chiefly learned of thee, 
Who hast that gift of patient tenderness, 
The instinctive wisdom of a woman's heart. 

They tell us that our land was made for 

song, 
With its huge rivers and sky-piercing 

peaks, 
Its sealike lakes and mighty cataracts, 
Its forests vast and hoar, and prairies wide, 
And mounds that tell of wondrous tribes 

extinct. 
But Poesy springs not from rocks and 

woods; 
Her womb and cradle are the human heart, 



26 



EARLIER POEMS 



And she can find a nobler theme for song 
In the most loathsome man that blasts the 

sight 
Than in the broad expanse of sea and shore 
Between the frozen deserts of the poles. 
All nations have their message from on 

high, 
Each the messiah of some central thought, 
For the fulfilment and delight of Man: 
One has to teach that labor is divine; 
Another Freedom; and another Mind; 
And all, that God is open-eyed and just, 
The happy centre and calm heart of all. 

Are, then, our woods, our mountains, and 

our streams, 
Needful to teach our poets how to sing ? 
O maiden rare, far other thoughts were ours, 
When we have sat by ocean's foaming 

marge, 
And watched the waves leap roaring on the 

rocks, 
Than young Leander and his Hero had, 
Gazing from Sestos to the other shore. 
The moon looks down and ocean worships 

her, 
Stars rise and set, and seasons come and go 
Even as they did in Homer's elder time, 
But we behold them not with Grecian eyes: 
Then they were types of beauty and of 

strength, 
But now of freedom, unconfined and pure, 
Subject alone to Order's higher law. 
What cares the Russian serf or Southern 

slave 
Though we should speak as man spake 

never yet 
Of gleaming Hudson's broad magnificence, 
Or green Niagara's never-ending roar ? 
Our country hath a gospel of her own 
To preach and practise before all the 

world, — 
The freedom and divinity of man, 
The glorious claims of human brother- 
hood, — 
Which to pay nobly, as a freeman should, 
Gains the sole wealth that will not fly 



And the soul's fealty to none but God. 
These are realities, which make the shows 
Of outward Nature, be they ne'er so grand, 
Seem small, and worthless, and contempti- 
ble. 
These are the mountain-summits for our 
bards, 



Which stretch far upward into heaven it- 
self, 
And give such widespread and exulting 

view 
Of hope, and faith, and onward destiny, 
That shrunk Parnassus to a molehill 

dwindles. 
Our new Atlantis, like a morning-star, 
Silvers the mirk face of slow - yielding 

Night, 
The herald of a fuller truth than yet 
Hath gleamed upon the upraised face of 

Man 
Since the earth glittered in her stainless 

prime, — 
Of a more glorious sunrise than of old 
Drew wondrous melodies from Memnon 

huge, 
Yea, draws them still, though now he sit 

waist-deep 
In the ingulfing flood of whirling sand, 
And look across the wastes of endless gray, 
Sole wreck, where once his hundred-gated 

Thebes 
Pained with her mighty hum the calm, 

blue heaven: 
Shall the dull stone pay grateful orisons, 
And we till noonday bar the splendor out, 
Lest it reproach and chide our sluggard 

hearts, 
Warm-nestled in the down of Prejudice, 
And be content, though clad with angel- 
wings, 
Close-clipped, to hop about from perch to 

perch, 
In paltry cages of dead men's dead 

thoughts ? 
Oh, rather, like the skylark, soar and sing, 
And let our gushing songs befit the dawn 
And sunrise, and the yet unshaken dew 
Brimming the chalice of each full-blown 

hope, 
Whose blithe front turns to greet the 

growing day ! 
Never had poets such high call before, 
Never can poets hope for higher one, 
And, if they be but faithful to their trust, 
Earth will remember them with love and joy, 
And oh, far better, God will not forget. 
For he who settles Freedom's principles 
Writes the death-warrant of all tyranny; 
Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to 

the heart, 
And his mere word makes despots tremble 






L'ENVOI 



27 



Than ever Brutus with his dagger could. 
Wait for no hints from waterfalls or 

woods, 
Nor dream that tales of red men, brute 

and fierce, 
Kepay the finding of this Western World, 
Or needed half the globe to give them 

birth: 
Spirit supreme of Freedom ! not for this 
Did great Columbus tame his eagle soul 
To jostle with the daws that perch in 

courts ; 
Not for this, friendless, on an unknown sea, 
Coping with mad waves and more mutin- 
ous spirits, 
Battled he with the dreadful ache at heart 
Which tempts, with devilish subtleties of 

doubt, 
The hermit of that loneliest solitude, 
The silent desert of a great New Thought ; 
Though loud Niagara were to-day struck 

dumb, 
Yet would this cataract of boiling life 
Rush plunging on and on to endless deeps, 
And utter thunder till the world shall 

cease, — 
A thunder worthy of the poet's song, 
And which alone can fill it with true life. 
The high evangel to our country granted 



Could make apostles, yea, with tongues of 

fire, 
Of hearts half-darkened back again to 

clay ! 
'T is the soul only that is national, 
And he who pays true loyalty to that 
Alone can claim the wreath of patriotism. 

Beloved ! if I wander far and oft 
From that which I believe, and feel, and 

know, 
Thou wilt forgive, not with a sorrowing 

heart, 
But with a strengthened hope of better 

things; 
Knowing that I, though often blind and 

false 
To those I love, and oh, more false than 

all 
Unto myself, have been most true to thee, 
And that whoso in one thing hath been 

true 
Can be as true in all. Therefore thy hope 
May yet not prove unfruitful, and thy love 
Meet, day by day, with less unworthy 

thanks, 
Whether, as now, we journey hand in hand, 
Or, parted in the body, yet are one 
In spirit and the love of holy things. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



When Lowell published his second volume, 
Poems, in 1843, he opened it with A Legend of 
Brittany, and dedicated it in the following 1 let- 
ter to the painter, William Page : — 

Mv dear Friend, — 

The love between us, which can now look 
back upon happy years of still enlarging con- 
fidence, and forward, with a sure trust in its 
own prophecy of yet deeper and tenderer sym- 
pathies, as long as life shall remain to us, 
stands in no need, I am well aware, of so poor 
a voucher as an Epistle Dedicatory. True, it 
is one of Love's chiefest charms, that it must 
still take special pains to be superfluous in 
seeking out ways to declare itself, — but for 
these it demands no publicity, and wishes no 
acknowledgment. But the admiration which 
one soul feels for another loses half its worth, 
if it let slip any opportunity of making itself 
heard and felt by that strange Abbot of Un- 
reason which we call the World. For the 
humblest man's true admiration is no uncer- 



tain oracle of the verdict of Posterity, — the 
unerring tribunal where Genius is at last al- 
lowed the right of trial by its peers, and to 
which none but sincere and real Greatness can 
appeal with an unwavering heart. There the 
false witnesses of to-day will be unable to ap- 
pear, being fled to some hospitable Texas in 
the realms of Limbo, beyond the sphere of its 
jurisdiction and the summons of its apparitors. 
I have never seen the works of the Great 
Masters of your Art, but I have studied their 
lives, and sure I am that no nobler, gentler, or 
purer spirit than yours was ever anointed by 
the Eternal Beauty to bear that part of her 
divine message which it belongs to the Great 
Painter to reveal. The sympathy of sister 
pursuits, of an agreeing artistic faith, and, yet 
more, of a common hope for the final destiny 
of man, has not been wanting to us, and now 
you will forgive the pride I feel in having this 
advantage over you, namely, of telling that ad- 
miration in public which I have never stinted 
to utter in private. You will believe, that, as 



28 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



your winning- that fadeless laurel, which you 
deserve, and which will one day surely be 
yours, can never heighten my judgment of you, 
so nothing that is not in your own control will 
ever lower it, and that I shall think as simply 
of you when the World's opinion has overtaken 
my own, as now. 

As the swiftly diverging channels of Life 
bear wider and wider apart from us the friends 
who hoisted sail with us as fellow-mariners, 
when we cast off for the voyage, and as some, 



even, who are yet side by side with us, no 
longer send back to us an answering cheer, we 
are drawn the more closely to those that re- 
main, and I would fain hope that this joining 
of our names will always be one of our not 
least happy memories. 

And so, with all best wishes, 

I remain always your friend, 

J. K. Lowell. 

Cambridge, December 15, 1843. 



A LEGEND OF BRITTANY 

Lowell was in high spirits when he was at 
work on A Legend of Brittany. " I am now 
at work," he writes to G. B. Loring, under 
date of June 15, 1843, " on a still longer poem 
[than Prometheus] in the ottava rima, to be the 
first in my forthcoming volume. I feel more 
and more assured every day that I shall yet do 
something that will keep my name (and per- 
haps my body) alive. My wings were never so 
light and strong as now." 

A Legend of Brittany and most of the other 
poems in the volume which it opened belong- 
in the category referred to by him in his Prefa- 
tory Note, of pieces which he " would gladly 
suppress or put into the Coventry of smaller 
print in an appendix." Their value is chiefly 
in the record they contain of his poetic devel- 
opment and his temperament. 



PART FIRST 



Fair as a summer dream was Margaret, 
Such dream as in a poet's soul might 
start, 
Musing of old loves while the moon doth 
set: 
Her hair was not more sunny than her 
heart, 
Though like a natural golden coronet 
It circled her dear head with careless 
art, 
Mocking the sunshine, that would fain 

have lent 
To its frank grace a richer ornament. 



His loved one's eyes could poet ever speak, 
So kind, so dewy, and so deep were 
hers, — 
But, while he strives, the choicest phrase, 
too weak, 
Their glad reflection in his spirit blurs; 



As one may see a dream dissolve and 
break 
Out of his grasp when he to tell it stirs, 
Like that sad Dryad doomed no more to 

bless 
The mortal who revealed her loveliness. 



She dwelt forever in a region bright, 
Peopled with living fancies of her own, 

Where naught could come but visions of 
delight, 
Far, far aloof from earth's eternal moan: 

A summer cloud thrilled through with rosy 
light, 
Floating beneath the blue sky all alone, 

Her spirit wandered by itself, and won 

A golden edge from some unsetting sun. 



The heart grows richer that its lot is poor, 
God blesses want with larger sympa- 
thies, 
Love enters gladliest at the humble door, 
And makes the cot a palace with his 
eyes; 
So Margaret's heart a softer beauty wore, 
And grew in gentleness and patience 
wise, 
For she was but a simple herdsman's child, 
A lily chance-sown in the rugged wild. 



There was no beauty of the wood or field 
But she its fragrant bosom-secret knew, 
Nor any but to her would freely yield 
Some grace that in her soul took root 
and grew: 
Nature to her shone as but now revealed, 
All rosy-fresh with innocent morning 
dew, 
And looked into her heart with dim, sweet 

eyes 
That left it full of sylvan memories. 



A LEGEND OF BRITTANY 



Oh, what a face was hers to brighten light, 
And give back sunshine with an added 
glow, 
To wile each moment with a fresh delight, 
And part of memory's best contentment 
grow ! 
Oh, how her voice, as with an inmate's 
right, 
Into the strangest heart would welcome 
go, 
And make it sweet, and ready to become 
Of white and gracious thoughts the chosen 
home ! 



None looked upon her but he straightway 
thought 
Of all the greenest depths of country 
cheer, 
And into each one's heart was freshly 
brought 
What was to him the sweetest time of 
year, 
So was her every look and motion fraught 
With out-of-door delights and forest 
lere; 
Not the first violet on a woodland lea 
Seemed a more visible gift of Spring than 
she. 



Is love learned only out of poets' books ? 
Is there not somewhat in the dropping 
flood, 
And in the nunneries of silent nooks, 

And in the murmured longing of the 
wood, 
That could make Margaret dream of love- 
lorn looks, 
And stir a thrilling mystery in her blood 
More trembly secret than Aurora's tear 
Shed in the bosom of an eglatere ? 



Full many a sweet forewarning hath the 
mind, 
Full many a whispering of vague desire, 
Ere comes the nature destined to unbind 
Its virgin zone, and all its deeps in- 
spire, — 
Low stirrings in the leaves, before the wind 
Wake all the green strings of the forest 
lyre, 



Faint heatings in the calyx, ere the rose 
Its warm voluptuous breast doth all un- 
close. 



Long in its dim recesses pines the spirit, 
Wildered and dark, despairingly alone; 

Though many a shape of beauty wander 
near it, 
And many a wild and half-remembered 
tone 

Tremble from the divine abyss to cheer it, 
Yet still it knows that there is only one 

Before whom it can kneel and tribute bring, 

At once a happy vassal and a king. 



To feel a want, yet scarce know what it is, 

To seek one nature that is always new, 
Whose glance is warmer than another's 
kiss, 
Whom we can bare our inmost beauty to, 
Nor feel deserted afterwards, — for this 
But with our destined co-mate we can 
do,— 
Such longing instinct fills the mighty scope 
Of the young soul with one mysterious 
hope. 



So Margaret's heart grew brimming with 
the lore 
Of love's enticing secrets; and although 
She had found none to cast it down before, 

Yet oft to Fancy's chapel she would go 
To pay her vows — and count the rosary 
o'er 
Of her love's promised graces: — haply 
so 
Miranda's hope had pictured Ferdinand 
Long ere the gaunt wave tossed him on the 
strand. 



A new-made star that swims the lonely 
gloom, 
Unwedded yet and longing for the sun, 
Whose beams, the bride-gifts of the lavish 
groom, 
Blithely to crown the virgin planet run, 
Her being was, watching to see the bloom 
Of love's fresh sunrise roofing one by 
one 
Its clouds with gold, a triumph-arch to be 
For him who came to hold her heart in fee. 



3° 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



Not far from Margaret's cottage dwelt a 
knight 
Of the proud Templars, a sworn celibate, 
Whose heart in secret fed upon the light 
And dew of her ripe beauty, through the 
grate 
Of his close vow catching what gleams he 
might 
Of the free heaven, and cursing all too late 
The cruel 'faith whose black walls hemmed 

him in 
And turned life's crowning bliss to deadly 



For he had met her in the wood by chance, 
And, having drunk '^r beauty's wilder- 
ing spell, 

His heart shook like the pennon of a lance 
That quivers in a breeze's sudden swell, 

And thenceforth, in a close-infolded trance, 
From mistily golden deep to deep he fell ; 

Till earth did waver and fade far away 

Beneath the hope in whose warm arms he 
lay. 



A dark, proud man he was, whose half- 
blown youth 
Had shed its blossoms even in opening, 
Leaving a few that with more winning ruth 
Trembling around grave manhood's stem 
might cling, 
More sad than cheery, making, in good 
sooth, 
Like the fringed gentian, a late autumn 
spring: 
A twilight nature, braided light and gloom, 
A youth half-smiling by an open tomb. 



Fair as an angel, who yet inly wore 

A wrinkled heart foreboding his near 
fall; 
Who saw him alway wished to know him 
more, 
As if he were some fate's defiant thrall 
And nursed a dreaded secret at his core; 

Little he loved, but power the most of all, 
And that he seemed to scorn, as one who 

knew 
By what foul paths men choose to crawl 
thereto. 



He had been noble, but some great deceit 
Had turned his better instinct to a vice: 
He strove to think the world was all a 
cheat, 
That power and fame were cheap at any 
price, 
That the sure way of being shortly great 
Was even to play life's game with loaded 
dice, 
Since he had tried the honest play and 

found 
That vice and virtue differed but in sound. 



Yet Margaret's sight redeemed him for a 



From his own thraldom; man could 
never be 
A hypocrite when first such maiden grace 

Smiled in upon his heart; the agony 
Of wearing all day long a lying face 

Fell lightly from him, and, a moment 
free, 
Erect with wakened faith his spirit stood 
And scorned the weakness of his demon- 
mood. 



Like a sweet wind-harp to him was her 
thought, 
Which would not let the common air 
come near, 
Till from its dim enchantment it had caught 
A musical tenderness that brimmed his 
ear 
With sweetness more ethereal than aught 
Save silver-dropping snatches that whil- 
ere 
Rained down from some sad angel's faith- 
ful harp 
To cool her fallen lover's anguish sharp. 

XXI 

Deep in the forest was a little dell 

High overarched with the leafy sweep 

Of a broad oak, through whose gnarled 
roots there fell 
A slender rill that sung itself to sleep, 

Where its continuous toil had scooped a well 
To please the fairy folk ; breathlessly deep 

The stillness was, save when the dreaming 
brook 

From its small urn a drizzly murmur shook. 



A LEGEND OF BRITTANY 



3i 



The wooded hills sloped upward all around 
With gradual rise, and made an even rim, 
So that it seemed a mighty casque un- 
bound 
From some huge Titan's brow to lighten 
him, 
Ages ago, and left upon the ground, 

Where the slow soil had mossed it to the 
brim, 
Till after countless centuries it grew 
Into this dell, the haunt of noontide dew. 

XXIII 

Dim vistas, sprinkled o'er with sun-flecked 
green, 
Wound through the thickset truuks on 
every side, 
And, toward the west, in fancy might be 
seen 
A Gothic window in its blazing pride, 
When the low sun, two arching elms be- 
tween, 
Lit up the leaves beyond, which, autumn- 
dyed 
With lavish hues, would into splendor start, 
Shaming the labored panes of richest art. 



Here, leaning once against the old oak's 

trunk, 
Mordred, for such was the young Tem- 
plar's name, 
Saw Margaret come; unseen, the falcon 

shrunk 
From the meek dove; sharp thrills of 

tingling flame 
Made him forget that he was vowed a 

monk, 
And all the outworks of his pride o'er- 

came : 
Flooded he seemed with bright delicious 

pain, 
As if a star had burst within his brain. 



Such power hath beauty and frank inno- 
cence : 
A flower bloomed forth, that sunshine 
glad to bless, 
Even from his love's long leafless stem; 
the sense 
Of exile from Hope's happy realm grew 



And thoughts of childish peace, he knew 
not whence, 
Thronged round his heart with many an 
old caress, 
Melting the frost there into pearly dew 
That mirrored back his nature's .morning- 
blue. 



She turned and saw him, but she felt no 
dread, 
Her purity, like adamantine mail, 
Did so encircle her; and yet her head 
She drooped, and made her golden hair 
her veil, 
Through which a glow of rosiest lustre 
spread, 
Then faded, and anon she stood all pale, 
As snow o'er which blush of northern-light 
Suddenly reddens, and as soon grows 
white. 



She thought of Tristrem and of Lancilot, 
Of all her dreams, and of kind fairies' 
might, 
And how that dell was deemed a haunted 
spot, 
Until there grew a mist before her sight, 
And where the present was she half forgot, 
Borne backward through the realms of 
old delight, — 
Then, starting up awake, she would have 

gone, 
Yet almost wished it might not be alone. 



How they went home together through the 
wood, 
And how all life seemed f ocussed into one 
Thought-dazzling spot that set ablaze the 
blood, 
What need to tell ? Fit language there 
is none 
For the heart's deepest things. Who ever 
wooed 
As in his boyish hope he would have done ? 
For, when the soul is fullest, the hushed 

tongue 
Voicelessly trembles like a lute unstrung. 



But all things carry the heart's messages 
And know it not, nor doth the heart well 
know, 



3 2 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



But Nature hath her will; even as the 

bees, 
Blithe go-betweens, fly singing to and fro 
With the fruit-quickening pollen ; — hard 

if these 
Found not some all unthought-of way to 

show 
Their secret each to each; and so they did, 
And one heart's flower-dust into the other 

slid. 



Young hearts are free; the selfish world it 

is 
That turns them miserly and cold as 

stone, 
And makes them clutch their fingers on 

the bliss 
Which but in giving truly is their 

own; — 
She had no dreams of barter, asked not 

his, 
But gave hers freely as she would have 

thrown 
A rose to him, or as that rose gives forth 
Its generous fragrance, thoughtless of its 

worth. 



Her summer nature felt a need to bless, 
And a like longing to be blest again; 

So, from her sky-like spirit, gentleness 
Dropt ever like a sunlit fall of rain, 

And his beneath drank in the bright caress 
As thirstily as would a parched plain, 

That long hath watched the showers of 
sloping gray 

For ever, ever, falling far away. 



How should she dream of ill ? the heart 
filled quite 

With sunshine, like the shepherd's-clock 
at noon, 
Closes its leaves around its warm delight; 

Whate'er in life is harsh or out of tune 
Is all shut out, no boding shade of blight 

Can pierce the opiate ether of its swoon: 
Love is but blind as thoughtful justice is, 
But naught can be so wanton-blind as bliss. 



All beauty and all life he was to her; 

She questioned not his love, she only 
knew 



That she loved him, and not a pulse could 
stir 
In her whole frame but quivered through 
and through 
With this glad thought, and was a minister 

To do him fealty and service true, 
Like golden ripples hasting to the land 
To wreck their freight of sunshine on the 
strand. 



O dewy dawn of love ! O hopes that are 
Hung high, like the cliff-swallow's peril- 
ous nest, 
Most like to fall when fullest, and that 
jar 
With every heavier billow ! O unrest 
Than balmiest deeps of quiet sweeter far ! 
How did ye triumph now in Margaret's 
breast, 
Making it readier to shrink and start 
Than quivering gold of the pond - lily's 
heart ! 



Here let us pause: oh, would the soul 
might ever 
Achieve its immortality in youth, 
When nothing yet hath damped its high 
endeavor 
After the starry energy of truth ! 
Here let us pause, and for a moment sever 
This gleam of sunshine from the sad 
unruth 
That sometime comes to all, for it is good 
To lengthen to the last a sunny mood. 



PART SECOND 



As one who, from the sunshine and the 
green, 
Enters the solid darkness of a cave, 
Nor knows what precipice or pit unseen 
May yawn before him with its sudden 
grave, 
And, with hushed breath, doth often for- 
ward lean, 
Dreaming he hears the plashing of a 
wave 
Dimly below, or feels a damper air 
From out some dreary chasm, he knows 
not where; 



A LEGEND OF BRITTANY 



33 



So, from the sunshine and the green of 
love, 
We enter on our story's darker part; 
And, though the horror of it well may 
move 
An impulse of repugnance in the heart, 
Yet let us think, that, as there 's naught 
above 
The all-embracing atmosphere of Art, 
So also there is naught that falls below 
Her generous reach, though grimed with 
guilt and woe. 



Her fittest triumph is to show that good 

Lurks in the heart of evil evermore, 
That love, though scorned, and outcast, 
and withstood, 
Can without end forgive, and yet have 
store ; 
God's love and man's are of the selfsame 
blood, 
And He can see that always at the door 
Of foulest hearts the angel-nature yet 
Knocks to return and cancel all its debt. 



It ever is weak falsehood's destiny 

That her thick mask turns crystal to let 
through 
The unsuspicious eyes of honesty; 

But Margaret's heart was too sincere 
and true 
Aught but plain truth and faithfulness to 
see, 
And Mordred's for a time a little grew 
To be like hers, won by the mild reproof 
Of those kind eyes that kept all doubt 
aloof. 



Full oft they met, as dawn and twilight 
meet 
In northern climes; she full of growing 
day 
As he of darkness, which before her feet 
Shrank gradual, and faded quite away, 
Soon to return; for power had made love 
sweet 
To him, and, when his will had gained 
full sway, 
The taste began to pall; for never power 
Can sate the hungry soul beyond an hour. 



He fell as doth the tempter ever fall, 
Even in the gaining of his loathsome 
end; 
God doth not work as man works, but 
makes all 
The crooked paths of ill to goodness 
tend; 
Let him judge Margaret ! If to be the 
thrall 
Of love, and faith too generous to defend 
Its very life from him she loved, be sin, 
What hope of grace may the seducer win ? 



Grim-hearted world, that look'st with Le- 
vite eyes 
On those poor fallen by too much faith in 
man, 
She that upon thy freezing threshold lies, 
Starved to more sinning by thy savage 
ban, 
Seeking that refuge because foulest vice 
More godlike than thy virtue is, whose 
span 
Shuts out the wretched only, is more free 
To enter heaven than thou shalt ever be ! 



Thou wilt not let her wash thy dainty feet 
With such salt things as tears, or with 
rude hair 
Dry them, soft Pharisee, that sit'st at meat 
With him who made her such, and 
speak'st him fair, 
Leaving God's wandering lamb the while to 
bleat 
Unheeded, shivering in the pitiless air: 
Thou hast made prisoned virtue show more 

wan 
And haggard than a vice to look upon. 



Now many months flew by, and weary 
grew . 
To Margaret the sight of happy things; 
Blight fell on all her flowers, instead of 
dew; 
Shut round her heart were now the joy- 
ous wings 
Wherewith it wont to soar; yet not un- 
true, 
Though tempted much, her woman's 
nature clings 



34 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



To its first pure belief, and with sad eyes 
Looks backward o'er the gate of Paradise. 



And so, though altered Mordred came less 
oft, 
And winter frowned where spring had 
laughed before 
In his strange eyes, yet half her sadness 
doffed, 
And in her silent patience loved him 
more : 
Sorrow had made her soft heart yet more 
soft, 
And a new life within her own she bore 
Which made her tenderer, as she felt it 

move 
Beneath her breast, a refuge for her love. 



This babe, she thought, would surely bring 
him back, 
And be a bond forever them between; 
Before its eyes the sullen tempest-rack 
Would fade, and leave the face of heaven 
serene ; 
And love's return doth more than fill the 
lack, 
Which in his absence withered the heart's 
green: 
And yet a dim foreboding still would flit 
Between her and her hope to darken it. 



She could not figure forth a happy fate, 
Even for this life from heaven so newly 
come ; 
The earth must needs be doubly desolate 
To him scarce parted from a fairer 
home: 
Such boding heavier on her bosom sate 
One night, as, standing in the twilight 
gloam, 
She strained her eyes beyond that dizzy 

verge 
At whose foot faintly breaks the future's 
surge. 



Poor little spirit ! naught but shame and woe 

Nurse the sick heart whose lifeblood 

nurses thine : 

Yet not those only ; love hath triumphed so, 

As for thy sake makes sorrow more 

divine : 



And yet, though thou be pure, the world is 
foe 
To purity, if born in such a shrine ; 
And, having trampled it for struggling 

thence, 
Smiles to itself, and calls it Providence. 



As thus she mused, a shadow seemed to 
rise 
From out her thought, and turn to dreari- 
ness 
All blissful hopes and sunny memories, 
And the quick blood would curdle up 
and press 
About her heart, which seemed to shut its 
eyes 
And hush itself, as who with shuddering 



Harks through the gloom and dreads e'en 

now to feel 
Through his hot breast the icy slide of 

steel. 



But, at that heart-beat, while in dread she 
was, 
In the low wind the honeysuckles gleam, 
A dewy thrill flits through the heavy 



And, looking forth, she saw, as in a 
dream, 
Within the wood the moonlight's shadowy 
mass: 
Night's starry heart yearning to hers 
doth seem, 
And the deep sky, full-hearted with the 

moon, 
Folds round her all the happiness of June. 



What fear could face a heaven and earth 
like this ? 
What silveriest cloud could hang 'neath 
such a sky ? 
A tide of wondrous and unwonted bliss 
Rolls back through all her pulses sud- 
denly, 
As if some seraph, who had learned to 
kiss 
From the fair daughters of the world 
gone by, 
Had wedded so his fallen light with hers, 
Such sweet, strange joy through soul and 
body stirs. 



A LEGEND OF BRITTANY 



35 



Now seek we Mordred : he who did not fear 
The crime, yet fears the latent conse- 
quence : 
If it should reach a brother Templar's ear, 
It haply might be made a good pretence 
To cheat him of the hope he held most 
dear; 
For he had spared no thought's or deed's 
expense, 
That by and by might help his wish to clip 
Its darling bride, — the high grandmaster- 
ship. 



The apathy, ere a crime resolved is done, 
Is scarce less dreadful than remorse for 
crime ; 
By no allurement can the soul be won 
From brooding o'er the weary creep of 
time: 
Mordred stole forth into the happy sun, 
Striving to hum a scrap of Breton 
rhyme, 
But the sky struck him speechless, and he 

tried 
In vain to summon up his callous pride. 



In the courtyard a fountain leaped alway, 
A Triton blowing jewels through his 
shell 

Into the sunshine; Mordred turned away, 
Weary because the stone face did not tell 

Of weariness, nor could he bear to-day, 
Heartsick, to hear the patient sink and 
swell 

Of winds among the leaves, or golden bees 

Drowsily humming in the orange-trees. 



All happy sights and sounds now came to 
him 
Like a reproach: he wandered far and 
wide, 
Following the lead of his unquiet whim, 
But still there went a something at his 
side 
That made the cool breeze hot, the sun- 
shine dim; 
It would not flee, it could not be defied, 
He could not see it, but he felt it there, 
By the damp chill that crept among his 
hair. 



Day wore at last; the evening-star arose, 
And throbbing in the sky grew red and 
set; 
Then with a guilty, wavering step he goes 
To the hid nook where they so oft had 
met 
In happier season, for his heart well knows 

That he is sure to find poor Margaret 
Watching and waiting there with love-lorn 

breast 
Around her young dream's rudely scattered 
nest. 



Why follow here that grim old chronicle 
Which counts the dagger-strokes and 
drops of blood ? 
Enough that Margaret by his mad steel 
fell, 
Unmoved by murder from her trusting 
mood, 
Smiling on him as Heaven smiles on Hell, 
With a sad love, remembering when he 
stood 
Not fallen yet, the unsealei* of her heart, 
Of all her holy dreams the holiest part. 



His crime complete, scarce knowing what 
he did, 
(So goes the tale,) beneath the altar 
there 
In the high church the stiffening corpse he 
hid, 
And then, to 'scape that suffocating air, 
Like a scared ghoul out of the porch he 
slid; 
But his strained eyes saw blood-spots 
everywhere, 
And ghastly faces thrust themselves be- 
tween 
His soul and hopes of peace with blasting 



His heart went out within him like a spark 
Dropt in the sea; wherever he made 
bold 
To turn his eyes, he saw, all stiff and stark, 
Pale Margaret lying dead; the lavish 
gold 
Of her loose hair seemed in the cloudy dark 
To spread a glory, and a thousand-fold 



3* 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



More strangely pale and beautiful she 

grew: 
Her silence stabbed his conscience through 

and through. 



Or visions of past days, — a mother's eyes 
That smiled down on Jhe fair boy at her 
knee, 
Whose happy upturned face to hers re- 
plies, — 
He saw sometimes: or Margaret mourn- 
fully 
Gazed on him full of doubt, as one who 
tries 
To crush belief that does love injury; 
Then she would wring her hands, but soon 

again 
Love's patience glimmered out through 
cloudy pain. 

XXVI 

Meanwhile he dared not go and steal away 

The silent, dead-cold witness of his sin; 
He had not feared the life, but that dull 
clay, 
Those open eyes that showed the death 
within, 
Would surely stare him mad; yet all the 
day 
A dreadful impulse, whence his will could 
win 
No refuge, made him linger in the aisle, 
Freezing with his wan look each greeting 
smile. 



Now, on the second day there was to be 
A festival in church: from far and near 

Came flocking in the sunburnt peasantry, 
And knights and dames with stately an- 
tique cheer, 

Blazing with pomp, as if all faerie 

Had emptied her quaint halls, or, as it 
were, 

The illuminated marge of some old book, 

While we were gazing, life and motion took. 



When all were entered, and the roving eyes 

Of all were stayed, some upon faces 

bright, 

Some on the priests, some on the traceries 

That decked the slumber of a marble 

knight, 



And all the rustlings over that arise 

From recognizing tokens of delight, 
When friendly glances meet, — then silent 

ease 
Spread o'er the multitude by slow degrees. 



Then swelled the organ: up through choir 
and nave 

The music trembled with an inward thrill 
Of bliss at its own grandeur: wave on wave 

Its flood of mellow thunder rose, until 
The hushed air shivered with the throb it 
gave, 

Then, poising for a moment, it stood still, 
And sank and rose again, to burst in spray 
That wandered into silence far awav. 



Like to a mighty heart the music seemed, 
That yearns with melodies it cannot 



Until, in grand despair of what it dreamed, 

In the agony of effort it doth break, 
Yet triumphs breaking; on it rushed and 

streamed 
And wantoned in its might, as when a 

lake, 
Long pent among the mountains, bursts its 

walls 
And in one crowding gush leaps forth and 

falls. 



Deeper and deeper shudders shook the air, 
As the huge bass kept gathering heavily, 
Like thunder when it rouses in its lair, 
And with its hoarse growl shakes the low- 
hung sky, 
It grew up like a darkness everywhere, 

Filling the vast cathedral ; — suddenly, 
From the dense mass a boy's clear treble 

broke 
Like lightning, and the full-toned choir 
awoke. 



Through gorgeous windows shone the sun 
aslant, 
Brimming the church with gold and pur- 
ple mist, 
Meet atmosphere to bosom that rich chant, 
Where fifty voices in one strand did twist 
Their varicolored tones, and left no want 
To the delighted soul, which sank abyssed 



A LEGEND OF BRITTANY 



37 



In the warm music cloud, while, far be- 
low, 
The organ heaved its surges to and fro. 



As if a lark should suddenly drop dead 
While the blue air yet trembled with its 
song, 
So snapped at once that music's golden 
thread, 
Struck by a nameless fear that leapt along 
From heart to heart, and like a shadow 
spread 
With instantaneous shiver through the 
throng, 
So that some glanced behind, as half aware 
A hideous shape of dread were standing 
there. 



As when a crowd of pale men gather round, 

Watching an eddy in the leaden deep, 
From which they deem the body of one 
drowned 
Will be cast forth, from face to face doth 
creep 
An eager dread that holds all tongues fast 
bound 
Until the horror, with a ghastly leap, 
Starts up, its dead blue arms stretched aim- 



Heaved with the swinging of the careless 



So in the faces of all these there grew, 

As by one impulse, a dark, freezing awe, 
Which with a fearful fascination drew 
All eyes toward the altar; damp and 
raw 
The air grew suddenly, and no man knew 
Whether perchance his silent neighbor 
saw 
The dreadful thing which all were sure 

would rise 
To scare the strained lids wider from their 
eyes. 



The incense trembled as it upward sent 
Its slow, uncertain thread of wandering 
blue, 
As 't were the only living element 

In all the church, so deep the stillness 
grew; 



It seemed one might have heard it, as it 

went, 
Give out an audible rustle, curling 

through 
The midnight silence of that awestruck air, 
More hushed than death, though so much 

life was there. 



Nothing they saw, but a low voice was 
heard 
Threading the ominous silence of that 
fear, 
Gentle and terrorless as if a bird, 

Wakened by some volcano's glare, should 
cheer 
The murk air with his song; yet every 
word 
In the cathedral's farthest arch seemed 
near, 
As if it spoke to every one apart, 
Like the clear voice of conscience in each 
heart. 



" O Rest, to weary hearts thou art most 
dear ! 
O Silence, after life's bewildering din, 
Thou art most welcome, whether in the sear 
Days of our age thou comest, or we win 
Thy poppy-wreath in youth ! then where- 
fore here 
Linger I yet, once free to enter in 
At that wished gate which gentle Death 

doth ope, 
Into the boundless realm of strength and 
hope ? 

xxxix 

" Think not in death my love could ever 
cease; 
If thou wast false, more need there is 
for me 
Still to be true; that slumber were not 
peace, 
If 't were unvisited with dreams of thee : 
And thou hadst never heard such words as 
these, 
Save that in haaven I must forever be 
Most comfortless and wretched, seeing this 
Our unbaptized babe shut out from bliss. 



' This little spirit with imploring eyes 
Wanders alone the dreary wild of space; 



3* 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



The shadow of his pain forever lies 

Upon my soul in this new dwelling- 
place ; 
His loneliness makes me in Paradise 

More lonely, and, unless I see his face, 
Even here for grief could I lie down and 

die, 
Save for my curse of immortality. 



" World after world he sees around him 
swim 
Crowded with happy souls, that take no 
heed 
Of the sad eyes that from the night's faint 
rim 
Gaze sick with longing on them as they 
speed 
With golden gates, that only shut on him; 
And shapes sometimes from hell's 
abysses freed 
Flap darkly by him, with enormous sweep 
Of wings that roughen wide the pitchy 
deep. 



" I am a mother, — spirits do not shake 
This much of earth from them, — and I 
must pine 

Till I can feel his little hands, and take 
His weary head upon this heart of mine; 

And, might it be, full gladly for his sake 
Would I this solitude of bliss resign 

And be shut out of heaven to dwell with 
him 

Forever in that silence drear and dim. 



" I strove to hush my soul, and would not 
speak 
At first, for thy dear sake ; a woman's love 
Is mighty, but a mother's heart is weak, 

And by its weakness overcomes ; I strove 

To smother bitter thoughts with patience 

meek, 

But still in the abyss my soul would rove, 

Seeking my child, and drove me here to 

claim 
The rite that gives him peace in Christ's 
dear name. 

XLIV 

" I sit and weep while blessed spirits sing; 
I can but long and pine the while they 
praise, 



And, leaning o'er the wall of heaven, I 

fling 
My voice to where I deem my infant 

strays, 
Like a robbed bird that cries in vain to 

bring 
Her nestlings back beneath her wings' 

embrace; 
But still he answers not, and I but know 
That heaven and earth are both alike in 

woe." 



Then the pale priests, with ceremony due, 
Baptized the child within its dreadful 

tomb 
Beneath that mother's heart, whose instinct 

true 
Star-like had battled down the triple 

gloom 
Of sorrow, love, and death: young maidens, 

too, 
Strewed the pale corpse with many a 

milkwhite bloom, 
And parted the bright hair, and on the 

breast 
Crossed the unconscious hands in sign of 

rest. 



Some said, that, when the priest had 

sprinkled o'er 

The consecrated drops, they seemed to 

hear 

A sigh, as of some heart from travail sore 

Released, and then two voices singing 

clear, 

Misereatur Deus, more and more 

Fading far upward, and their ghastly 
fear 
Fell from them with that sound, as bodies 

fall 
From souls upspringing to celestial hall. 



PROMETHEUS 

In a letter to G. B. Loring, dated June 15, 
1843, Lowell writes : " I have been very happy 
for the last day or two in writing a long poem 
in blank verse on Prometheus, the Greek arche- 
type of St. Simeon Stylites, the first reformer 
and locofoco of the Greek Mythology. It will 
be quite worth your while to read it when it is 
printed. I hope to see it in the July number 
of the Democratic Review, but fear it was too 



PROMETHEUS 



39 



late, having- only been sent on this morning. 
It is the longest and best poem I have ever 
■written, and overrunning with true radicalism 
and antislavery. I think that it will open the 
eyes of some folk and make them think that I 
am a poet, whatever they may say." 

After the appearance of the poem, he regrets 
the absence of any public notice, and acknow- 
ledges thus an appreciative letter from his friend 
Charles F. Briggs : " Although such great 
names as Goethe, Byron, and Shelley have all 
handled the subject in modern times, you will 
find that I have looked at it from a somewhat 
new point of view. I have made it radical, 
and I believe that no poet in this age can write 
much that is good unless he give himself up 
to this tendency. For radicalism has now for the 
first time taken a distinctive and acknowledged 
shape of its own. So much of its spirit as 
poets in former ages have attained (and from 
their purer organization they could not fail of 
some) was by instinct rather than by reason. 
It has never till now been seen to be one of the 
two great wings that upbear the universe." 

One after one the stars have risen and 

set, 
Sparkling upon the hoarfrost on my chain: 
The Bear, that prowled all night about the 

fold 
Of the North-star, hath shrunk into his den, 
Scared by the blithesome footsteps of the 

Dawn, 
Whose blushing smile floods all the Orient ; 
And now bright Lucifer grows less and 

less, 
Into the heaven's blue quiet deep -with- 
drawn. 
Sunless and starless all, the desert sky- 
Arches above me, empty as this heart 
For ages hath been empty of all joy, 
Except to brood upon its silent hope, 
As o'er its hope of day the sky doth now. 
All night have I heard voices: deeper yet 
The deep low breathing of the silence grew, 
While all about, muffled in awe, there stood 
Shadows, or forms, or both, clear-felt at 

heart, 
But, when I turned to front them, far along 
Only a shudder through the midnight ran, 
And the dense stillness walled me closer 

round. 
But still I heard them wander up and down 
That solitude, and flappings of dusk wings 
Did mingle with them, whether of those 

hags 
Let slip upon me once from Hades deep, 



Or of yet direr torments, if such be, 

I could but guess; and then toward me 

came 
A shape as of a woman : very pale 
It was, and calm; its cold eyes did not 

move, 
And mine moved not, but only stared on 

them. 
Their fixed awe went through my brain like 

ice; 
A skeleton hand seemed clutching at my 

heart, 
And a sharp chill, as if a dank night fog 
Suddenly closed me in, was all I felt: 
And then, methought, I heard a freezing 

sigh, 
A long, deep, shivering sigh, as from blue 

lips 
Stiffening in death, close to mine ear. I 

thought 
Some doom was close upon me, and I looked 
And saw the red moon through the heavy 

mist, 
Just setting, and it seemed as it were fall- 

Or reeliug to its fall, so dim and dead 
And palsy-struck it looked. Then all sounds 

merged 
Into the rising surges of the pines, 
Which, leagues below me, clothing the 

gaunt loins 
Of ancient Caucasus with hairy strength, 
Sent up a murmur in the morning wind, 
Sad as the wail that from the populous 

earth 
All day and night to high Olympus soars, 
Fit incense to thy wicked throne, O Jove! 

Thy hated name is tossed once more in 

scorn 
From off my lips, for I will tell thy doom. 
And are these tears? Nay, do not triumph, 

Jove ! 
They are wrung from me but by the ago- 
nies 
Of prophecy, like those sparse drops which 

fall 
From clouds in travail of the lightning, 

when 
The great wave of the storm high-curled 

and black 
Rolls steadily onward to its thunderous 

break. 
Why art thou made a god of, thou poor 

type 



4° 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



Of anger, and revenge, and cunning force ? 

True Power was never born of brutish 
Strength, 

Nor sweet Truth suckled at the shaggy 
• dugs 

Of that old she-wolf. Are thy thunder- 
bolts, 

That quell the darkness for a space, so 
strong 

As the prevailing patience of meek Light, 

Who, with the invincible tenderness of 
peace, 

Wins it to be a portion of herself ? 

Why art thou made a god of, thou, who 
hast 

The never-sleeping terror at thy heart, 

That birthright of all tyrants, worse to bear 

Than this thy ravening bird on which I 
smile ? 

Thou swear 'st to free me, if I will unfold 

What kind of doom it is whose omen flits 

Across thy heart, as o'er a troop of doves 

The fearful shadow of the kite. What 
need 

To know that truth whose knowledge can- 
not save ? 

Evil its errand hath, as well as Good; 

When thine is finished, thou art known no 
more: 

There is a higher purity than thou, 

And higher purity is greater strength; 

Thy nature is thy doom, at which thy heart 

Trembles behind the thick wall of thy 
might. 

Let man but hope, and thou art straight- 
way chilled 

With thought of that drear silence and deep 
night 

Which, like a dream, shall swallow thee 
and thine: 

Let man but will, and thou art god no 
more, 

More capable of ruin than the gold 

And ivory that image thee on earth. 

He who hurled down the monstrous Titan- 
brood 

Blinded with lightnings, with rough thun- 
ders stunned, 

Is weaker than a simple human thought. 

My slender voice can shake thee, as the 
breeze, 

That seems but apt to stir a maiden's hair, 

Sways huge Oceanus from pole to pole; 

For I am still Prometheus, and foreknow 

In my wise heart the end and doom of all. 



Yes, I am still Prometheus, wiser grown 
By years of solitude, — that holds apart 
The past and future, giving the soul roOm 
To search into itself, — and long commune 
With this eternal silence ; — more a god, 
In my long-suffering and strength to meet 
With equal front the direst shafts of fate, 
Than thou in thy faint-hearted despotism, 
Girt with thy baby-toys of force and wrath. 
Yes, I am that Prometheus who brought 

down 
The light to man, which thou, in selfish 

fear, 
Hadst to thyself usurped, — his by sole 

right, 
For Man hath right to all save Tyranny, — 
And which shall free him yet from thy frail 

throne. 
Tyrants are but the spawn of Ignorance, 
Begotten by the slaves they trample on, 
Who, could they win a glimmer of the 

light, 
And see that Tyranny is always weakness, 
Or Fear with its own bosom ill at ease, 
Would laugh away in scorn the sand-wove 

chain 
Which their own blindness feigned for ada- 
mant. 
Wrong ever builds on quicksands, but the 

Right 
To the firm centre lays its moveless base. 
The tyrant trembles, if the air but stir 
The innocent ringlets of a child's free hair, 
And crouches, when the thought of some 

great spirit, 
With world-wide murmur, like a rising 

gale, 
Over men's hearts, as over standing corn, 
Bushes, and bends them to its own strong 

will. 
So shall some thought of mine yet circle 

earth, 
And puff away thy crumbling altars, Jove ! 

And, wouldst thou know of my supreme 

revenge, 
Poor tyrant, even now dethroned in heart, 
Realmless in soul, as tyrants ever are, 
Listen ! and tell me if this bitter peak, 
This never-glutted vulture, and these 

chains 
Shrink not before it; for it shall befit 
A sorrow-taught, unconquered Titan-heart. 
Men, when their death is on them, seem to 

stand 



PROMETHEUS 



4i 



On a precipitous crag that overhangs 
The abyss of doom, and in that depth to see, 
As in a glass, the features dim and vast 
Of things to come, the shadows, as it 

seems, 
Of what have been. Death ever fronts the 

wise; 
Not fearfully, but with clear promises 
Of larger life, on whose broad vans up- 
borne, 
Their outlook widens, and they see beyond 
The horizon of the Present and the Past, 
Even to the very source and end of things. 
Such am I now: immortal woe hath made 
My heart a seer, and my soul a judge 
Between the substance and the shadow of 

Truth. 
The sure supremeness of the Beautiful, 
By all the martyrdoms made doubly sure 
Of such as I am, this is my revenge, 
Which of my wrongs builds a triumphal 

arch, 
Through which I see a sceptre and a 

throne. 
The pipings of glad shepherds on the hills, 
Tending the flocks no more to bleed for 

thee; 
The songs of maidens pressing with white 

feet 
The vintage on thine altars poured no more ; 
The murmurous bliss of lovers underneath 
Dim grapevine bowers whose rosy bunches 

press 
Not half so closely their warm cheeks, un- 

paled 
By thoughts of thy brute lust; the hive- 
like hum 
Of peaceful commonwealths, where sun- 
burnt Toil 
Reaps for itself the rich earth made its own 
By its own labor, lightened with glad 

hymns 
To an omnipotence which thy mad bolts 
Would cope with as a spark with the vast 

sea, — 
Even the spirit of free love and peace, 
Duty's sure recompense through life and 

death, — 
These are such harvests as all master- 
spirits 
Reap, haply not on earth, but reap no less 
Because the sheaves are bound by hands 

not theirs; 
These are the bloodless daggers where- 
withal 



They stab fallen tyrants, this their high re- 
venge : 
For their best part of life on earth is when, 
Long after death, prisoned and pent no 

more, 
Their thoughts, their wild dreams even, 

have become 
Part of the necessary air men breathe: 
When, like the moon, herself behind a 

cloud, 
They shed down light before us on life's 

sea, 
That cheers us to steer onward still in 

hope. 
Earth with her twining memories ivies o'er 
Their holy sepulchres; the chainless sea, 
In tempest or wide calm, repeats their 

thoughts ; 
The lightning and the thunder, all free 

things, 
Have legends of them for the ears of men. 
All other glories are as falling stars, 
But universal Nature watches theirs: 
Such strength is won by love of human- 
kind. 

Not that I feel that hunger after fame, 
Which souls of a half-greatness are beset 

with; 
But that the memory of noble deeds 
Cries shame upon the idle and the vile, 
And keeps the heart of Man forever up 
To the heroic level of old time. 
To be forgot at first is little pain 
To a heart conscious of such high intent 
As must be deathless on the lips of men; 
But, having been a name, to sink and be 
A something which the world can do with- 
out, 
Which, having been or not, would never 

change 
The lightest pulse of fate, — this is indeed 
A cup of bitterness the worst to taste, 
And this thy heart shall empty to the 

dregs. 
Endless despair shall be thy Caucasus, 
And memory thy vulture; thou wilt find 
Oblivion far lonelier than this peak. 
Behold thy destiny ! Thou think' st it much 
That I should brave thee, miserable god ! 
But I have braved a mightier than thou, 
Even the sharp tempting of this soaring 

heart, 
Which might have made me, scarcely less 
than thou, 



42 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



A god among my brethren weak and blind, 
Scarce less than thou, a pitiable thing 
To be down-trodden into darkness soon. 
But now I am above thee, for thou art 
The bungling workmanship of fear, the 

block 
That awes the swart Barbarian ; but I 
Am what myself have made, — a nature 

wise 
With finding in itself the types of all, 
With watching from the dim verge of the 

time 
What things to be are visible in the gleams 
Thrown forward on them from the lumi- 
nous past, 
Wise with the history of its own frail 

heart, 
With reverence and with sorrow, and with 

love, 
Broad as the world, for freedom and for 

man. 

Thou and all strength shall crumble, ex- 
cept Love, 
By whom, and for whose glory, ye shall 

cease: 
And, when thou 'rt but a weary moaning 

heard 
From out the pitiless gloom of Chaos, I 
Shall be a power and a memory, 
A name to fright all tyrants with, a light 
Unsetting as the pole-star, a great voice 
Heard in the breathless pauses of the 

fight 
By truth and freedom ever waged with 

wrong, 
Clear as a silver trumpet, to awake 
Far echoes that from age to age live on 
r In kindred spirits, giving them a sense 
Of boundless power from boundless suffer- 



ing wrung 



y-- 



And many a glazing eye shall smile to see 
The memory of my triumph/for to meet 
Wrong with endurance, and to overcome 
The present with a heart that looks beyond, 
Are triumph^ like a prophet eagle, perch 
Upon the sacred banner of the Right. 
Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no 

seed, 
And feeds the green earth with its swift 

decay, 
Leaving it richer for the growth of truth; 
But Good, once put in action or in thought, 
Like a strong oak, doth from its boughs 

shed down 



The ripe germs of a forest. Thou, weak 

god, 
Shalt fade and be forgotten ! but this soul, 
Fresh-living still in the serene abyss, 
In every heaving shall partake, that grows 
From heart to heart among the sons of 

men, — 
As the ominous hum before the earthquake 

runs 
Far through the iEgean from roused isle 

to isle, — 
Foreboding wreck to palaces and shrines, 
And mighty rents in many a cavernous 

error 
That darkens the free light to man: — This 

heart, 
, Unscarred by thy grim vulture, as the truth 
Grows but more lovely 'neath the beaks 

and claws 
Of Harpies blind that fain would soil it, 

shall 
In all the throbbing exultations share 
That wait on freedom's triumphs, and in 

all 
The glorious agonies of martyr-spirits, 
Sharp lightning-throes to split the jagged 

clouds 
That veil the future, showing them the 

end, 
Pain's thorny crown for constancy and 

truth, 
Girding the temples like a wreath of stars. 
This is a thought, that, like the fabled 

laurel, 
Makes my faith thunder-proof; and thy 

dread bolts 
Fall on me like the silent flakes of snow 
On the hoar brows of aged Caucasus: 
But, oh, thought far more blissful, they 

can rend 
This cloud of flesh, and make my soul a 

star ! 

Unleash thy crouching thunders now, O 

Jove ! 
Free this high heart, which, a poor captive 

long, 
Doth knock to be let forth, this heart 

which still, 
In its invincible manhood, overtops 
Thy puny godship, as this mountain doth 
The pines that moss its roots. Oh, even 

now, 
While from my peak of suffering I look 

down, 



PROMETHEUS 



43 



Beholding with a far-spread gush of hope 
The sunrise of that Beauty, in whose face, 
Shone all around with love, no man shall 

look 
But straightway like a god he be uplift 
Unto the throne long empty for his sake, 
And clearly oft foreshadowed in brave 

dreams 
By his free inward nature, which nor thou, 
Nor any anarch after thee, can bind 
From working its great doom, — now, now 

set free 
This essence, not to die, but to become 
Part of that awful Presence which doth K 

haunt 
The palaces of tyrants, to scare off, 
With its grim eyes and fearful whisperings 
And hideous sense of utter loneliness, 
All hope of safety, all desire of peace, 
All but the loathed forefeeling of blank 

death, — 
Part of that spirit which doth ever brood 
In patient calm on the unpilfered nest 
Of man's deep heart, till mighty thoughts 

grow fledged 
To sail with darkening shadow o'er the 

world, 
Filling with dread such souls as dare not 

trust 
In the unfailing energy of Good, 
Until they swoop, and their pale quarry 

make 
Of some o'erbloated wrong, — that spirit 

which 
Scatters great hopes in the seed-field of 

man, 
Like acorns among grain, to grow and be 
A roof for freedom in all coming time ! 

But no, this cannot be; for ages yet, 
In solitude unbroken, shall I hear 
The angry Caspian to the Euxine shout, 
And Euxine answer with a muffled roar, 
On either side storming the giant walls 
Of Caucasus with leagues of climbing foam 
(Less, from my height, than flakes of 

downy snow), 
That draw back baffled but to hurl again, 
Snatched up in wrath and horrible turmoil, 
Mountain on mountain, as the Titans erst, 
My brethren, scaling the high seat of Jove, 
Heaved Pelion upon Ossa's shoulders 

broad 
In vain emprise. The moon will come and 

go 



With her monotonous vicissitude;- 
Once beautiful, when I was free to walk 
Among my fellows, and to interchange 
The influence benign of loving eyes, 
But now by aged use grown wearisome ; — 
False thought ! most false ! for how could 

I endure 
These crawling centuries of lonely woe. 
Unshamed by weak complaining, but for 

thee, 
Loneliest, save me, of all created things, 
Mild-eyed Astarte, my best comforter, 
With thy pale smile of sad benignity ? 

Year after year will pass away and seem 
To me, in mine eternal agony, 
But as the shadows of dumb summer 

clouds, 
Which I have watched so often darkening 

o'er 
The vast Sarmatian plain, league-wide at 

first, 
But, with still swiftness, lessening on and 

on 
Till cloud and shadow meet and mingle 

where 
The gray horizon fades into the sky, 
Far, far to northward. Yes, for ages yet 
Must I lie here upon my altar huge, 
A sacrifice for man. Sorrow will be, 
As it hath been, his portion; endless doom, 
While the immortal with the mortal linked 
Dreams of its wings and pines for what it 

dreams, 
With upward yearn unceasing. Better 

so: 
For wisdom is stern sorrow's patient child, 
And empire over self, and all the deep 
Strong charities that make men seem like 

gods; 
And love, that makes them be gods, from 

her breasts 
Sucks in the milk that makes mankind one 

blood. 
Good never comes unmixed, or so it seems, 
Having two faces, as some images 
Are carved, of foolish gods ; one face is 

ill; 
But one heart lies beneath, and that is 

good, 
As are all hearts, when we explore their 

depths. 
y Therefore, great heart, bear up ! thou art 

but type 
Of what all lofty spirits endure, that fain 



44 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



Would win men back to strength and 

peace through love: 
Each hath his lonely peak, and on each 

heart 
Envy, or scorn, or hatred, tears lifelong 
With vulture beak; yet the high soul is 

left; 
And faith, which is but hope grown wise, 

and love 
And patience which at last shall overcome. 



THE SHEPHERD OF KING AD- 
METUS 

There came a youth upon the earth, 

Some thousand years ago,. 
Whose slender hands were nothing worth, 
Whether to plough, or reap, or sow. 

Upon an empty tortoise-shell 

He stretched some chords, and drew 
Music that made men's bosoms swell 
Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew. 

Then King Admetus, one who had 

Pure taste by right divine, 
Decreed his singing not too bad 
To hear between the cups of wine: 

And so, well pleased with being soothed 

Into a sweet half-sleep, 
Three times his kingly beard he smoothed, 
And made him viceroy o'er his sheep. 

His words were simple words enough, 

And yet he used them so, 
That what in other mouths was rough 
In his seemed musical and low. 

Men called him but a shiftless youth, 

In whom no good they saw; 
And yet, unwittingly, in truth, 
They made his careless words their law. 

They knew not how he learned at all, 

For idly, hour by hour, 
He sat and watched the dead leaves fall, 
Or mused upon a common flower. 

It seemed the loveliness of things 

Did teach him all their use, 
For, in mere weeds, and stones, and 

springs, 
He found a healing power profuse. 



Men granted that his speech was wise, 

But, when a glance they caught 
Of his slim grace and woman's eyes, 
They laughed, and called him good-for- 
naught. 

Yet after he was dead and gone, 

And e'en his memory dim, 
Earth seemed more sweet to live upon, 
More full of love, because of him. 

And day by day more holy grew 
Each spot where he had trod, 
Till after-poets only knew 
Their first-born brother as a god. 



THE TOKEN 

It is a mere wild rosebud, 

Quite sallow now, and dry, 
Yet there 's something wondrous in it, 

Some gleams of days gone by, 
Dear sights and sounds that are to me 
The very moons of memory, 
And stir my heart's blood far below 
Its short-lived waves of joy and woe. 

Lips must fade and roses wither, 

All sweet times be o'er; 
Thev only smile, and, murmuring 
"Thither!" 

Stay with us no more : 
And yet of ttimes a look or smile, 
Forgotten in a kiss's while, 
Years after from the dark will start, 
And flash across the trembling heart. 

Thou hast given me many roses, 

But never one, like this, 
O'erfloods both sense and spirit 

With such a deep, wild bliss; 
We must have instincts that glean up 
Sparse drops of this life in the cup, 
Whose taste shall give us all that we 
Can prove of immortality. 

Earth's stablest things are shadows, 

And, in the life to come, 
Haply some chance-saved trifle 

May tell of this old home: 
As now sometimes we seem to find, 
In a dark crevice of the mind, 
Some relic, which, long pondered o'er, 
Hints faintly at a life before. 



AN INCIDENT IN A RAILROAD CAR 



45 



AN INCIDENT IN A RAILROAD 
CAR 

He spoke of Burns: men rude and rough 
Pressed round to hear the praise of one 
Whose heart was made of manly, simple 
stuff, 
As homespun as their own. 

And, when he read, they forward leaned, 
Drinking, with thirsty hearts and ears, 
His brook-like songs whom glory never 
weaned 
From humble smiles and tears. 

Slowly there grew a tender awe, 
Sun-like, o'er faces brown and hard, 
As if in him who read they felt and saw 
Some presence of the bard. 

It was a sight for sin and wrong 
And slavish tyranny to see, 
A sight to make our faith more pure and 
strong 
In high humanity. 

I thought, these men will carry hence 
Promptings their former life above, 
And something of a finer reverence 
For beauty, truth, and love. 

God scatters love on every side 
Freely among his children all, 
And always hearts are lying open wide, 
Wherein some grains may fall. 

There is no wind but soweth seeds 
Of a more true and open life, 
Which burst, unlooked for, into high-souled 
deeds, 
With wayside beauty rife. 

We find within these souls of ours 
Some wild germs of a higher birth, 
Which in the poet's tropic heart bear flowers 
Whose fragrance fills the earth. 

Within the hearts of all men lie 
These promises of wider bliss, 
Which blossom into hopes that cannot die, 
In sunny hours like this. 

All that hath been majestical 

In life or death, since time began, 



Is native in the simple heart of all, 
The angel heart of man. 

And thus, among the untaught poor, 
Great deeds and feelings find a home, 
That cast in shadow all the golden lore 
Of classic Greece and Rome. 

O mighty brother-soul of man, 
Where'er thou art, in low or high, 
Thy skyey arches with exulting span 
O'er-roof infinity ! 

All thoughts that mould the age begin 
Deep down within the primitive soul, 
And from the many slowly upward win 
To one who grasps the whole: 

In his wide brain the feeling deep 
That struggled on the many's tongue 
Swells to a tide of thought, whose surges 
leap 
O'er the weak thrones of wrong. 

All thought begins in feeling, — wide 
In the great mass its base is hid, 
And, narrowing up to thought, stands 
glorified, 
A moveless pyramid. 

Nor is he far astray, who deems 
That every hope, which rises and grows 
broad 
In the world's heart, by ordered impulse 
streams 
From the great heart of God. 

God wills, man hopes: in common souls 
Hope is but vague and undefined, 
Till from the poet's tongue the message 
rolls 
A blessing to his kind. 

Never did Poesy appear 
So full of heaven to me, as when 
I saw how it would pierce through pride 
and fear 
To the lives of coarsest men. 

It may be glorious to write 
Thoughts that shall glad the two or 
three 
High souls, like those far stars that come in 
sight 
Once in a century; — 



46 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



But better far it is to speak 
One simple word, which now and then 
Shall waken their free nature in the weak 
And friendless sons of men; 

To write some earnest verse or line, 
Which, seeking not the praise of art, 
Shall make a clearer faith and manhood 
shine 
In the untutored heart. 

He who doth this, in verse or prose, 
May be forgotten in his day, 
But surely shall be crowned at last with 
those 
Who live and speak for aye. 



RHCECUS 

God sends his teachers unto every age, 
To every clime, and every race of men, 
With revelations fitted to their growth 
And shape of mind, nor gives the realm of 

Truth 
Into the selfish rule of one sole race: 
Therefore each form of worship that hath 

swayed 
The life of man, and given it to grasp 
The master-key of knowledge, reverence, 
Infolds some germs of goodness and of 

right ; 
Else never had the eager soul, which 

loathes 
The slothful down of pampered ignorance, 
Found in it even a moment's fitful rest. 

There is an instinct in the human heart 
Which makes that all the fables it hath 

coined, 
To justify the reign of its belief 
And strengthen it by beauty's right divine, 
Veil in their inner cells a mystic gift, 
Which, like the hazel twig, in faithful 

hands, 
Points surely to the hidden springs of 

truth. 
For, as in nature naught is made in vain, 
But all things have within their hull of 

use 
A wisdom and a meaning which may speak 
Of spiritual secrets to the ear 
Of spirit ; so, in whatso'er the heart 
Hath fashioned for a solace to itself, 
To make its inspirations suit its creed, 



And from the niggard hands of falsehood 

wring 
Its needful food of truth, there ever is 
A sympathy with Nature, which reveals, 
Not less than her own works, pure gleams 

of light 
And earnest parables of inward lore. 
Hear now this fairy legend of old Greece, 
As full of gracious youth, and beauty still 
As the immortal freshness of that grace 
Carved for all ages on some Attic frieze. 



J 



A youth named Rhcecus, wandering in 

the wood, 

Saw an old oak just trembling to its fall, 
And, feeling pity of so fair a tree, 
He propped its gray trunk with admiring 

care, 
And with a thoughtless footstep loitered 

on. 
But, as he turned, he heard a voice behind 
That murmured " Rhcecus ! " 'T was as if 

the leaves, 
Stirred by a passing breath, had murmured 

it, 
And, while he paused bewildered, yet again 
It murmured " Rhcecus ! " softer than a 

breeze. 
He started and beheld with dizzy eyes 
What seemed the substance of a happy 

dream 
Stand there before him, spreading a warm 

glow 
Within the green glooms of the shadowy 

oak. 
It seemed a woman's shape, yet far too fair 
To be a woman, and with eyes too meek 
For any that were wont to mate with gods. 
All naked like a goddess stood she there, 
And like a goddess all too beautiful 
To feel the guilt-born earthliness of shame. 
^Rhcecus, I am the Dryad of this tree," 
Thus she began, dropping her low-toned 

words 
Serene, and full, and clear, as drops of dew, 
"And with it I am doomed to live and die; 
The rain and sunshine are my caterers, 
Nor have I other bliss than simple life; 
Now ask me what thou wilt, that I can 

give, 
And with a thankful joy it shall be thine." 

Then Rhcecus, with a flutter at the heart, 
Yet by the prompting of such beauty bold, 
Answered: "What is there that can satisfy 



RHGECUS 



47 



The endless craving of the soul but love ? 
Give me thy love, or but the hope of that 
Which must be evermore my nature's 

goal." 
After a little pause she said again, 
But with a glimpse of sadness in her tone, 
"I give it, Rhcecus, though a perilous gift; 
An hour before the sunset meet me here." 
And straightway there was nothing he 

could see 
But the green glooms beneath the shadowy 

oak, 
And not a sound came to his straining ears 
But the low trickling rustle of the leaves, 
And far away upon an emerald slope 
The falter of an idle shepherd's pipe. 

Now, in those days of simpleness and 

faith, 
Men did not think that happy things were 

dreams 
Because they overstepped the narrow bourn 
Of likelihood, but reverently deemed 
Nothing too wondrous or too beautiful 
To be the guerdon of a daring heart. 
So Rhcecus made no doubt that he was 

blest, 
And all along unto the city's gate 
Earth seemed to spring beneath him as he 

walked, 
The clear, broad sky looked bluer than its 

wont, 
And he could scarce believe he had not 

wings, 
Such sunshiue seemed to glitter through 

his veins 
Instead of blood, so light he felt and 

strange. 

Young Rhcecus had a faithful heart 
enough, 

But one that in the present dwelt too 
much, 

And, taking with blithe welcome whatso- 
e'er 

Chance gave of joy, was wholly bound in 
that, 

Like the contented peasant of a vale, 

Deemed it the world, and never looked 
beyond. 

So, haply meeting in the afternoon 

Some comrades who were playing at the 
dice, 

He joined them, and forgot all else be- 
side. 



The dice were rattling at the merriest, 
And Rhcecus, who had met but sorry luck, 
Just laughed in triumph at a happy throw, 
When through the room there hummed a 

yellow bee 
That buzzed about his ear with down- 
dropped legs 
As if to light. And Rhcecus laughed and 

said, 
Feeling how red and flushed he was with 

loss, 
" By Venus ! does he take me for arose ? " 
And brushed him off with rough, impa- 
tient hand. 
But still the bee came back, and thrice 

again 
Rhcecus did beat him off with growing 

wrath. 
Then through the window flew the wounded 

bee, 
And Rhcecus, tracking him with angry 

eyes, 
Saw a sharp mountain-peak of Thessaly 
Against the red disk of the setting sun, — 
And instantly the blood sank from his 

heart, 
As if its very walls had caved away. 
Without a word he turned, and, rushing 

forth, 
Ran madly through the city and the gate, 
And o'er the plain, which now the wood's 

long shade, 
By the low sun thrown forward broad and 

dim, 
Darkened wellnigh unto the city's wall. 

Quite spent and out of breath he reached 
the tree, 

And, listening fearfully, he heard once 
more 

The low voice murmur " Rhcecus ! " close 
at hand: 

Whereat he looked around him, but could 
see 

Naught but the deepening glooms beneath 
the oak. 

Then sighed the voice, " O Rhcecus ! never- 
more 

Shalt thou behold me or by day or night, 

Me, who would fain have blessed thee with 
a love 

More ripe and bounteous than ever yet 

Filled up with nectar any mortal heart: 
sBut thou didst scorn my humble messen- 
ger, 



48 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



And sent'st him back to rue with bruised 

wings. 
We spirits only show to gentle eyes, 
We ever ask an undivided love, 
And he who scorns the least of Nature's 

works 
Is thenceforth exiled and shut out from all. 
Farewell ! for thou canst never see me 

more." 

Then Rhcecus beat his breast, and 

groaned aloud, 
And cried, " Be pitiful ! forgive me yet 
This once, and I shall never need it 

more ! " 
"Alas!" the voice returned, " 't is thou 

art blind, 
Not I unmerciful; I can forgive, 
But have no skill to heal thy spirit's eyes; 
Only the soul hath power o'er itself." 
With that again there murmured "Never- 
more ! " 
And Rhcecus after heard no other sound, 
Except the rattling of the oak's crisp 

leaves, 
Like the long surf upon a distant shore, 
Raking the sea-worn pebbles up and down. 
The night had gathered round him: o'er 

the plain 
The city sparkled with its thousand lights, 
And sounds of revel fell upon his ear 
Harshly and like a curse; above, the sky, 
With all its bright sublimity of stars, 
Deepened, and on his forehead smote the 

breeze: 
Beauty was all around him and delight, 
But from that eve he was alone on earth. 



THE FALCON 

I know a falcon swift and peerless 
As e'er was cradled in the pine; 

No bird had ever eye so fearless, 
Or wing so strong as this of mine. 

The winds not better love to pilot 
A cloud with molten gold o'errun, 

Than him, a little burning islet, 
A star above the coming sun. 

For with a lark's heart he doth tower, 
By a glorious upward instinct drawn ; 

No bee nestles deeper in the flower 
Than he in the bursting rose of dawn. 



No harmless dove, no bird that singeth, 
Shudders to see him overhead; 

The rush of his fierce swooping bringeth 
To innocent hearts no thrill of dread. 

Let fraud and wrong and baseness shiver, 
For still between them and the sky 

The falcon Truth hangs poised forever 
And marks them with his vengeful eye. 



TRIAL 



Whether the idle prisoner through his 

grate 
Watches the waving of the grass-tuft small, 
Which, having colonized its rift i' th' wall, 
Accepts God's dole of good or evil fate, 
And from the sky's just helmet draws its 

lot 
Daily of shower or sunshine, cold or hot; — 
Whether the closer captive of a creed, 
Cooped up from birth to grind out endless 

chaff, 
Sees through his treadmill-bars the noonday 

laugh, 
And feels in vain his crumpled pinions 

breed ; — 
Whether the Georgian slave look up and 

mark, 
With bellying sails puffed full, the tall 

cloud-bark 
Sink northward slowly, — thou alone seem'st 

good, 
Fair only thou, O Freedom, whose desire 
Can light in muddiest souls quick seeds of 

fire, 
And strain life's chords to the old heroic 

mood. 



Yet are there other gifts more fair than 

thine, 
Nor can I count him happiest who has never 
Been forced with his own hand his chains to 

sever, 
And for himself find out the way divine; 
He never knew the aspirer's glorious pains, 
He never earned the struggle's priceless 

gains. 
Oh, block by block, with sore and sharp 

endeavor, 
Lifelong we build these human natures up 
Into a temple fit for Freedom's shrine, 



A GLANCE BEHIND THE CURTAIN 



49 



And Trial ever consecrates the cup 
Wherefrom we pour her sacrificial wine. 



A GLANCE BEHIND THE CUR- 
TAIN 

This poem, printed in The Democratic Re- 
view for September, 1843, is most probably the 
one to which Lowell refers in a letter to C. F. 
Briggs, already quoted in the head-note to 
Prometheus : " I have sent another poem to 
O'Sullivan, still more radical than Prometheus, 
and in some respects better, though, from its 
subject, incapable of so high a strain as that." 
Elsewhere in this letter he appears to give it 
the title Cromwell. 

It is interesting to turn back five years to the 
summer of Lowell's graduation and listen to 
what he says to G. B. Loring: "A plan has 
been running in my head for some time, of writ- 
ing a sort of dramatic poem on the subject of 
Cromwell. Those old Roundheads have never 
had justice done them. They have only been 
held up as canting, psalm-singing, hypocritical 
rascals ; as a sort of foil for the open-hearted 
Cavalier. But it were a strange thing, indeed, 
if there were not somewhat in such men as Mil- 
ton, Sidney, Hampden, Selden, and Pym. It 
always struck me that there was more true po- 
etry in those old fiery-eyed, buff -belted warriors, 
with their deep, holy enthusiasm for liberty 
and democracy, political and religious ; with 
their glorious trust in the arm of the Lord in 
battle — than in the dashing, ranting Cavaliers, 
who wished to restore their king that they 
might give vent to their passions, and go to 
sleep again in the laps of their mistresses, deaf 
to the cries of the poor and the oppressed." 

We see but half the causes of our deeds, 
Seeking them wholly in the outer life, 
And heedless of the encircling spirit-world, 
Which, though unseen, is felt, and sows in 

us 
All germs of pure and world-wide purposes. 
From one stage of our being to the next 
We pass unconscious o'er a slender bridge, 
The momentary work of unseen hands, 
Which crumbles down behind us; looking 

back, 
We see the other shore, the gulf between, 
And, marvelling how we won to where we 

stand, 
Content ourselves to call the builder Chance. 
We trace the wisdom to the apple's fall, 
Not to the birth-throes of a mighty Truth 
Which, for long ages in blank Chaos dumb, 



Yet yearned to be incarnate, and had found 
At last a spirit meet to be the womb 
From which it might be born to bless man- 
kind, — 
Not to the soul of Newton, ripe with all 
The hoarded thoughtfulness of earnest 

years, 
And waiting but one ray of sunlight more 
To blossom fully. 

But whence came that ray ? 
We call our sorrows Destiny, but ought 
Rather to name our high successes so. 
Only the instincts of great souls are Fate, 
And have predestined sway: all other 

things, 
Except by leave of us, could never be. 
For Destiny is but the breath of God 
Still moving in us, the last fragment left 
Of our unfallen nature, waking oft 
Within our thought, to beckon us beyond 
The narrow circle of the seen and known, 
And always tending to a noble end, 
As all things must that overrule the soul, 
And for a space unseat the helmsman, Will. 
The fate of England and of freedom once 
Seemed wavering in the heart of one plain 

man: 
One step of his, and the great dial-hand, 
That marks the destined progress of the 

world 
In the eternal round from wisdom on 
To higher wisdom, had been made to pause 
A hundred years. That step he did not 

take, — 
He knew not why, nor we, but only God, — 
And lived to make his simple oaken chair 
More terrible and soberly august, 
More full of majesty than any throne, 
Before or after, of a British king. 

Upon the pier stood two stern-visaged 

men, 
Looking to where a little craft lay moored, 
Swayed by the lazy cui ent of the Thames, 
Which weltered by in muddy listlessness. 
Grave men they were, and battlings of 

fierce thought 
Had trampled out all softness from their 

brows, 
And ploughed rough furrows there before 

their time, 
For other crop than such as homebred 

Peace 
Sows broadcast in the willing soil of Youth. 



5° 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



Care, not of self, but for the common-weal, 
Had robbed their eyes of youth, and left 

instead 
A look of patient power and iron will, 
And something fiercer, too, that gave 

broad hint 
Of the plain weapons girded at their sides. 
The younger had an aspect of command, — 
Not such as trickles down, a slender 

stream, 
In the shrunk channel of a great descent, 
But such as lies entowered in heart and 

head, 
And an arm prompt to do the 'bests of 

both. 
His was a brow where gold were out of 

place, 
And yet it seemed right worthy of a crown 
(Though he despised such), were it only 

made 
Of iron, or some serviceable stuff 
That would have matched his brownly 

rugged face. 
The elder, although such he hardly seemed 
(Care makes so little of some five short 

years), 
Had a clear, honest face, whose rough- 
hewn strength 
Was mildened by the scholar's wiser heart 
To sober courage, such as best befits 
The unsullied temper of a well - taught 

mind, 
Yet so remained that one could plainly 



The hushed volcano smouldering under- 
neath. 

He spoke: the other, hearing, kept his 
gaze 

Still fixed, as on some problem in the sky. 

" O Cromwell, we are fallen on evil 

times ! 
There was a day when England had wide 

room 
For honest men as well as foolish kings: 
But now the uneasy stomach of the time 
Turns squeamish at them both. Therefore 

let us 
Seek out that savage clime, where men as 

yet 
Are free : there sleeps the vessel on the tide, 
Her languid canvas drooping for the wind; 
Give us but that, and what need we to fear 
This Order of the Council? The free 



Will not say No to please a wayward king, 
Nor will the winds turn traitors at his 

beck: 
All things are fitly cared for, and the Lord 
Will watch as kindly o'er the exodus 
Of us his servants now, as in old time. 
We have no cloud or fire, and haply we 
May not pass dry-shod through the ocean- 
stream; 
But, saved or lost, all things are in His 

hand." 
So spake he, and meantime the other stood 
With wide gray eyes still reading the blank 

air, 
As if upon the sky's blue wall he saw 
Some mystic sentence, written by a hand, 
Such as of old made pale the Assyrian 

king, 
Girt with his satraps in the blazing feast. 

" Hampden ! a moment since, my pur- 
pose was 
To fly with thee, — for I will call it flight, 
Nor flatter it with any smoother name, — 
But something in me bids me not to go; 
And I am one, thou knowest, who, un- 
moved 
By what the weak deem omens, yet give 

heed 
And reverence due to whatsoe'er my soul 
Whispers of warning to the inner ear. 
Moreover, as I know that God brings 

round 
His purposes in ways undreamed by us, 
And makes the wicked but his instruments 
To hasten their own swift and sudden fall, 
I see the beauty of his providence 
In the King's order: blind, he will not let 
His doom part from him, but must bid it 

stay 
As 't were a cricket, whose enlivening 

chirp 
He loved to hear beneath his very hearth. 
Why should we fly ? Nay, why not rather 

stay 
And rear again our Zion's crumbled walls, 
Not, as of old the walls of Thebes were 

built, 
By minstrel twanging, but, if need should 

be, 
With the more potent music of our swords ? 
Think'st thou that score of men beyond the 

sea 
Claim more God's care than all of England 
here ? 



A GLANCE BEHIND THE CURTAIN 



5 1 



No: when He moves His arm, it is to aid 
Whole peoples, heedless if a few be 

crushed, 
As some are ever, when the destiny 
Of man takes one stride onward nearer 

home. 
Believe me, 't is the mass of men He 

loves; 
And, where there is most sorrow and most 

want, 
Where the high heart of man is trodden 

down 
The most, 't is not because He hides His 

face 
From them in wrath, as purblind teachers 

prate : 
Not so: there most is He, for there is He 
Most needed. Men who seek for Fate 

abroad 
Are not so near His heart as they who dare 
Frankly to face her where she faces them, 
On their own threshold, where their souls 

are strong 
To grapple with and throw her; as I once, 
Being yet a boy, did cast this puny king, 
Who now has grown so dotard as to deem 
That he can wrestle with an angry realm, 
And throw the brawned Antasus of men's 

rights. 
No, Hampden ! they have half-way con- 
quered Fate 
Who go half-way to meet her, — as will I. 
Freedom hath yet a work for me to do; 
So speaks that inward voice which never yet 
Spake falsely, when it urged the spirit on 
To noble emprise for country and mankind. 
And, for success, I ask no more than 

this, — 
To bear unflinching witness to the truth. 
All true whole men succeed; for what is 

worth 
Success's name, unless it be the thought, 
The inward surety, to have carried out 
A noble purpose to a noble end, 
Although it be the gallows or the block ? 
'T is only Falsehood that doth ever need 
These outward shows of gain to bolster her. 
Be it we prove the weaker with our swords; 
Truth only needs to be for once spoke out, 
And there 's such music in her, such 

strange rhythm, 
As makes men's memories her joyous 

slaves, 
And clings around the soul, as the sky 

clings 



Round the mute earth, forever beautiful, 
And, if o'erclouded, only to burst forth 
More all-embracingly divine and clear: 
Get but the truth once uttered, and 't is 

like 
A star new-born, that drops into its place, 
And which, once circling in its placid 

round, 
Not all the tumult of the earth can shake. 

" What should we do in that small colony 
Of pinched fanatics, who would rather 

choose 
Freedom to clip an inch more from their 

hair, 
Than the great chance of setting England 

free ? 
Not there, amid the stormy wilderness, 
Should we learn wisdom; or if learned, 

what room 
To put it into act, — else worse than 

naught ? 
We learn our souls more, tossing for an 

hour 
Upon this huge and ever-vexed sea 
Of human thought, where kingdoms go to 

wreck 
Like fragile bubbles yonder in the stream, 
Than in a cycle of New England sloth, 
Broke only by a petty Indian war, 
Or quarrel for a letter more or less 
In some hard word, which, spelt in either 

way, 
Not their most learned clerks can under- 
stand. 
New times demand new measures and new 

men; 
The world advances, and in time outgrows 
The laws that in our fathers' day were 

best; 
And, doubtless, after us, some purer 

scheme 
Will be shaped out by wiser men than we, 
Made wiser by the steady growth of truth. 
We cannot hale Utopia on by force ; 
But better, almost, be at work in sin, 
Than in a brute inaction browse and sleep. 
No man is born into the world whose work 
Is not born with him ; there is always work, 
And tools to work withal, for those who 

will; 
And blessed are the horny hands of toil ! 
The busy world shoves angrily aside 
The man who stands with arms akimbo set, 
Until occasion tells him what to do; 



5 2 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



And he who waits to have his task marked 

out 
Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled. 
Our time is one that calls for earnest deeds: 
Reason and Government, like two broad 

seas, 
Yearn for each other with outstretched 

arms 
Across this narrow isthmus cf the throne, 
And roll their white surf higher every day. 
One age moves onward, and the next builds 

U P 
Cities and gorgeous palaces, where stood 

The rude log-huts of those who tamed the 

wild, 
Rearing from out the forests they had 

felled 
The goodly framework of a fairer state; 
The builder's trowel and the settler's axe 
Are seldom wielded by the selfsame hand; 
Ours is the harder task, yet not the less 
Shall we receive the blessing for our toil 
From the choice spirits of the aftertime. 
My soul is not a palace of the past, 
Where outworn creeds, like Rome's gray 

senate, quake, 
Hearing afar the Vandal's trumpet hoarse, 
That shakes old systems with a thunder-fit. 
The time is ripe, and rotten -ripe, for 

change ; 
Then let it come: I have no dread of what 
Is called for by the instinct of mankind; 
Nor think I that God's world will fall 

apart 
Because we tear a parchment more or less. 
Truth is eternal, but her effluence, 
With endless change, is fitted to the hour; 
Her mirror is turned forward to reflect 
The promise of the future, not the past. 
He who would win the name of truly great 
Must understand his own age and the next, 
And make the present ready to fulfil 
Its prophecy, and with the future merge 
Gently and peacefully, as wave with wave. 
The future works out great men's pur- 



The present is enough for common souls, 
Who, never looking forward, are indeed 
Mere clay, wherein the footprints of their 

age 
Are petrified forever: better those 
Who lead the blind old giant by the hand 
From out the pathless desert where he 

gropes, 
And set him onward in his darksome way. 



I do not fear to follow out the truth, 

Albeit along the precipice's edge. 

Let us speak plain: there is more force in 

names 
Than most men dream of; and a lie may 

keep 
Its throne a whole age longer, if it skulk 
Behind the shield of some fair-seeming 

name. 
Let us call tyrants tyrants, and maintain 
That only freedom comes by grace of God, 
And all that comes not by His grace must 

fall; 
For men in earnest have no time to waste 
In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth. 

" I will have one more grapple with the 

man 
Charles Stuart: whom the boy o'ercame, 
The man stands not in awe of. I, per- 
chance, 
Am one raised up by the Almighty arm 
To witness some great truth to all the 

world. 
Souls destined to o'erleap the vulgar lot, 
And mould the world unto the scheme of 

God, 
Have a fore-consciousness of their high 

doom, 
As men are known to shiver at the heart 
When the cold shadow of some coming ill 
Creeps slowly o'er their spirits unawares. 
Hath Good less power of prophecy than 

111? 
How else could men whom God hath called 

to sway 
Earth's rudder, and to steer the bark of 

Truth, 
Beating against the tempest tow'rd her 

port, 
Bear all the mean and buzzing grievances, 
The petty martyrdoms, wherewith Sin 

strives 
To weary out the tethered hope of Faith ? 
The sneers, the unrecognizing look of 

friends, 
Who worship the dead corpse of old king 

Custom, 
Where it doth lie in state within the 

Church, 
Striving to cover up the mighty ocean 
With a man's palm, and making even the 

truth 
Lie for them, holding up the glass reversed, 
To make the hope of man seem farther off ? 






A CHIPPEWA LEGEND 



53 



My God ! when I read o'er the bitter lives 
Of men whose eager hearts were quite too 

great 
To beat beneath the cramped mode of the 

day, 
And see them mocked at by the world they 

love, 
Haggling with prejudice for pennyworths 
Of that reform which their hard toil will 

make 
The common birthright of the age to 

come, — 
When I see this, spite of my faith in God, 
I marvel how their hearts bear up so long; 
Nor could they but for this same prophecy, 
This inward feeling of the glorious end. 

"Deem me not fond; but in my warmer 
youth, 
Ere my heart's bloom was soiled and brushed 



I had great dreams of mighty things to 

come; 
Of conquest, whether by the sword or pen . 
I knew not; but some conquest I would 

have, 
Or else swift death: now wiser grown in 

years, 
I find youth's dreams are but the flutterings 
Of those strong wings whereon the soul 

shall soar 
In after time to win a starry throne ; 
And so I cherish them, for they were lots, 
Which I, a boy, cast in the helm of Fate. 
Now will I draw them, since a man's right 

hand, 
A right hand guided by an earnest soul, 
With a true instinct, takes the golden 

prize 
From out a thousand blanks. What men 

call luck 
Is the prerogative of valiant souls, 
The fealty life pays its rightful kings. 
The helm is shaking now, and I will stay 
To pluck my lot forth; it were sin to flee! " 

So they two turned together; one to die, 
Fighting for freedom on the bloody field; 
The other, far more happy, to become 
A name earth wears forever next her heart ; 
One of the few that have a right to rank 
With the true Makers: for his spirit 

wrought 
Order from Chaos; proved that right di- 



Dwelt only in the excellence of truth; 
And far within old Darkness' hostile lines 
Advanced and pitched the shining tents of 

Light. 
Nor shall the grateful Muse forget to tell, 
That — not the least among his many 

claims 
To deathless honor — he was Milton's 

friend, 
A man not second among those who lived 
To show us that the poet's lyre demands 
An arm of tougher sinew than the sword. 



A CHIPPEWA LEGEND 

a\yeu/a yueV julol iced Xeyeiv £o~t\v rd5e, 
&\yos Se criyav. 

jEschylus, Prom. Vinct. 197, 198. 

For the leading- incidents in this tale I am 
indebted to the very valuable Algic Researches 
of Henry R. Schoolcraft, Esq. J. R. L. 

The old Chief, feeling now wellnigh his 

end, 
Called his two eldest children to his side, 
And gave them, in few words, his parting 

charge ! 
"My son and daughter, me ye see no more; 
The happy hunting - grounds await me, 

green 
With change of spring and summer through 

the year: 
But, for remembrance, after I am gone, 
Be kind to little Sheemah for my sake: 
Weakling he is and young, and knows not 

yet 
To set the trap, or draw the seasoned bow; 
Therefore of both your loves he hath more 

need, 
And he, who needeth love, to love hath 

right ; 
It is not like our furs and stores of corn, 
Whereto we claim sole title by our toil, 
But the Great Spirit plants it in our hearts, 
And waters it, and gives it sun, to be 
The common stock and heritage of all: 
Therefore be kind to Sheemah, that your- 
selves 
May not be left deserted in your need." 

Alone, beside a lake, their wigwam stood, 
Far from the other dwellings of their tribe; 
And, after many moons, the loneliness 
Wearied the elder brother, and he said, 



54 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



" Why should I dwell here far from men, 

shut out 
From the free, natural joys that fit my age ? 
Lo, I am tall and strong, well skilled to 

hunt, 
Patient of toil and hunger, and not yet 
Have seen the danger which I dared not 

look 
Full in the face; what hinders me to be 
A mighty Brave and Chief among my 

kin ? " 
So, taking up his arrows and his bow, 
As if to hunt, he journeyed swiftly on, 
Until he gained the wigwams of his tribe, 
Where, choosing out a bride, he soon for- 
got, 
In all the fret and bustle of new life, 
The little Sheemah and his father's charge. 

Now when the sister found her brother 
gone, 
And that, for many days, he came not back, 
She wept for Sheemah more than for her- 
self; 
For Love bides longest in a woman's heart, 
And flutters many times before he flies, 
And then doth perch so nearly, that a word 
May lure him back to his accustomed nest; 
| And Duty lingers even when Love is gone, 
Oft looking out in hope of his return; 
And, after Duty hath been driven forth, 
Then Selfishness creeps in the last of all, 
Warming her lean hands at the lonely 

hearth, 
And crouching o'er the embers, to shut out 
Whatever paltry warmth and light are left, 
With avaricious greed, from all beside. 
So, for long months, the sister hunted wide, 
And cared for little Sheemah tenderly; 
But, daily more and more, the loneliness 
Grew wearisome, and to herself she sighed, 
"Am I not fair? at least the glassy pool, 
That hath no cause to flatter, tells me so; 
But, oh, how flat and meaningless the tale, 
Unless it tremble on a lover's tongue ! 
Beauty hath no true glass, except it be 
In the sweet privacy of loving eyes." 
Thus deemed she idly, and forgot the lore 
Which she had learned of nature and the 

woods, 
That beauty's chief reward is to itself, 
And that Love's mirror holds no image 

long 
Save of the inward fairness, blurred and 
lost 



Unless kept clear and white by Duty's care. 
So she went forth and sought the haunts of 

men, 
And, being wedded, in her household cares, 
Soon, like the elder brother, quite forgot 
The little Sheemah and her father's charge. 

But Sheemah, left alone within the lodge, 
Waited and waited, with a shrinking heart, 
Thinking each rustle was his sister's step, 
Till hope grew less and less, and then went 

out, 
And every sound was changed from hope 

to fear. 
Few sounds there were: — the dropping of 

a nut, 
The squirrel's chirrup, and the jay's harsh 

scream, 
Autumn's sad remnants of blithe Summer's 

cheer, 
Heard at long intervals, seemed but to 

make 
The dreadful void of silence silenter. 
• Soon what small store his sister left was 

gone, 
And, through the Autumn, he made shift 

to live 
On roots and berries, gathered in much 

fear 
Of wolves, whose ghastly howl he heard 

ofttimes, 
Hollow and hungry, at the dead of night. 
But Winter came at last, and, when the 

snow, 
Thick-heaped for gleaming leagues o'er 

hill and plain, 
Spread its unbroken silence over all, 
Made bold by hunger, he was fain to glean 
(More sick at heart than Ruth, and all 

alone) 
After the harvest of the merciless wolf, 
Grim Boaz, who, sharp-ribbed and gaunt, 

yet feared 
A thing more wild and starving than him- 
self; 
Till, by degrees, the wolf and he grew 

friends, 
And shared together all the winter 

through. 

Late in the Spring, when all the ice was* 

gone, 
The elder brother, fishing in the lake, 
Upon whose edge his father's wigwam 

stood, 



COLUMBUS 



55 



Heard a low moaning noise upon the shore : 
Half like a child it seemed, half like a 

wolf, 
And straightway there was something in 

his heart 
That said, " It is thy brother Sheemah's 

voice." 
So, paddling swiftly to the bank, he saw, 
Within a little thicket close at hand, 
A child that seemed fast changing to a 

wolf, 
From the neck downward, gray with 

shaggy hair, 
That still crept on and upward as he 

looked. 
The face was turned away, but well he 

knew 
That it was Sheemah's, even his brother's 

face. 
Then with his trembling hands he hid his 

eyes, 
And bowed his head, so that he might not 

see 
The first look of his brother's eyes, and 

cried, 
" O Sheemah ! O my brother, speak to 

me ! 
Dost thou not know me, that I am thy 

brother ? 
Come to me, little Sheemah, thou shalt 

dwell 
With me henceforth, and know no care or 

want ! " 
Sheemah was silent for a space, as if 
'T were hard to summon up a human 

voice, 
And, when he spake, the voice was as a 

wolf's: 
" I know thee not, nor art thou what thou 

say'st ; 
I have none other brethren than the 

wolves, 
And, till thy heart be changed from what 

it is, 
Thou art not worthy to be called their 

kin." 
Then groaned the other, with a choking 

tongue, 
" Alas ! my heart is changed right bitterly; 
'T is shrunk and parched within me even 

now ! " 
And, looking upward fearfully, he saw 
Only a wolf that shrank away and ran, 
Ugly and fierce, to hide among the woods. 



STANZAS ON FREEDOM 

Men ! whose boast it is that ye 
Come of fathers brave and free, 
If there breathe on earth a slave, 
Are ye truly free and brave ? 
If ye do not feel the chain, 
When it works a brother's pain, 
Are ye not base slaves indeed, 
Slaves unworthy to be freed ? 

Women ! who shall one day bear 
Sons to breathe New England air, 
If ye hear, without a blush, 
Deeds to make the roused blood rush 
Like red lava through your veins, 
For your sisters now in chains, — 
Answer ! are ye fit to be 
Mothers of the brave and free ? 

Is true Freedom but to break 
Fetters for our own dear sake, 
And, with leathern hearts, forget 
That we owe mankind a debt ? 
No ! true freedom is to share 
All the chains our brothers wear, 
And, with heart and hand, to be 
Earnest to make others free ! 

They are slaves who fear to speak 

For the fallen and the weak; 

They are slaves who will not choose 

Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, 

Rather than in silence shrink 

From the truth they needs must think; 

They are slaves who dare not be 

In the right with two or three. 



COLUMBUS 

I have partly written a poem on Columbus to 
match with Prometheus and Cromwell. I like 
it better than either in point of artistic merit. 
J. R. L. to C. F. Brig-gs, September 18, 1844. 

The cordage creaks and rattles in the 

wind, 
With whims of sudden hush; the reeling 

sea 
Now thumps like solid rock beneath the 

stern, 
Now leaps with clumsy wrath, strikes 

short, and, falling 



56 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



Crumbled to whispery foam, slips rustling 
down 

The broad backs of the waves, which jostle 
and crowd 

To fling themselves upon that unknown 
shore, 

Their used familiar since the dawn of 
time, 

Whither this foredoomed life is guided on 

To sway on triumph's hushed, aspiring 
poise 

One glittering moment, then to break ful- 
filled. 

How lonely is the sea's perpetual swing, 
The melancholy wash of endless waves, 
The sigh of some grim monster undescried, 
Fear-painted on the canvas of the dark, 
Shifting on his uneasy pillow of brine ! 
Yet night brings more companions than the 

day 
To this drear waste; new constellations 

burn, 
And fairer stars, with whose calm height 

my soul 
Finds nearer sympathy than with my herd 
Of earthen souls, whose vision's scanty ring 
Makes me its prisoner to beat my wings 
Against the cold bars of their unbelief, 
Knowing in vain my own free heaven be- 
yond. 
O God ! this world, so crammed with eager 

life, 
That comes and goes and wanders back to 

silence 
Like the idle wind, which yet man's shap- 
ing mind 
Can make his drudge to swell the longing 

sails 
Of highest endeavor, — this mad, unthrift 

world, 
Which, every hour, throws life enough 

away 
To make her deserts kind and hospitable, 
Lets her great destinies be waved aside 
By smooth, lip-reverent, formal infidels, 
Who weigh the God they not believe with 

gold, 
And find no spot in Judas, save that he, 
Driving a duller bargain than he ought, 
Saddled his guild with too cheap precedent. 
O Faith ! if thou art strong, thine opposite 
Is mighty also, and the dull fool's sneer 
Hath of ttimes shot chill palsy through the 



Just lifted to achieve its crowning deed, 
And made the firm-based heart, that would 

have quailed 
The rack or fagot, shudder like a leaf 
Wrinkled with frost, and loose upon its 

stem. 
The wicked and the weak, by some dark 

law, 
Have a strange power to shut and rivet 

down 
Their own horizon round us, to unwing 
Our heaven-aspiring visions, and to blur 
With surly clouds the Future's gleaming 

peaks, 
Far seen across the brine of thankless 

years. 
If the chosen soul could never be alone 
In deep mid-silence, open-doored to God, 
No greatness ever had been dreamed or 

done; 
Among dull hearts a prophet never grew; 
The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude. 

The old world is effete; there man with 

man 
Jostles, and, in the brawl for means to live, 
Life is trod underfoot, — Life, the one 

block 
Of marble that 's vouchsafed wherefrom to 

carve 
Our great thoughts, white and godlike, to 

shine down 
The future, Life, the irredeemable block, 
Which one o'er-hasty chisel-dint oft mars, 
Scanting our room to cut the features out 
Of our full hope, so forcing us to crown 
With a mean head the perfect limbs, or 

leave 
The god's face glowing o'er a satyr's trunk, 
Failure's brief epitaph. 

Yes, Europe's world 
Reels on to judgment; there the common 

need, 
Losing God's sacred use, to be a bond 
'Twixt Me and Thee, sets each one scowl- 

ingly 
O'er his own selfish hoard at bay; no state, 
Knit strongly with eternal fibres up 
Of all men's separate and united weals, 
Self-poised and sole as stars, yet one as 

light, 
Holds up a shape of large Humanity 
To which by natural instinct every man 
Pays loyalty exulting, by which all 



COLUMBUS 



57 



Mould their own lives, and feel their pulses 

filled 
With the red, fiery blood of the general 

life, 
Making them mighty in peace, as now in 

war 
They are, even in the flush of victory, 

weak, 
Conquering that manhood which should 

them subdue. 
And what gift bring I to this untried 

world ? 
Shall the same tragedy be played anew, 
And the same lurid curtain drop at last 
On one dread desolation, one fierce crash 
Of that recoil which on its makers God 
Lets Ignorance and Sin and Hunger make, 
Early or late ? Or shall that common- 
wealth 
Whose potent unity and concentric force 
Can draw these scattered joints and parts 

of men 
Into a whole ideal man once more, 
Which sucks not from its limbs the life 

away, 
But sends it flood-tide and creates itself 
Over again in every citizen, 
Be there built up ? For me, I have no 

choice; 
I might turn back to other destinies, 
For one sincere key opes all Fortune's doors ; 
But whoso answers not God's earliest call 
Forfeits or dulls that faculty supreme 
Of lying open to his genius 
Which makes the wise heart certain of its 

ends. 

Here am I; for what end God knows, not I; 
Westward still points the inexorable soul: 
Here am I, with no friend but the sad sea, 
The beating heart of this great enterprise, 
Which, without me, would stiffen in swift 

death ; 
This have I mused on, since mine eye could 

first 
Among the stars distinguish and with joy 
Rest on that God-fed Pharos of the north, 
On some blue promontory of heaven lighted 
That juts far out into the upper sea; 
To this one hope my heart hath clung for 

years, 
As would a foundling to the talisman 
Hung round his neck by hands he knew not 

whose ; 
A poor, vile thing and dross to all beside, 



Yet he therein can feel a virtue left 

By the sad pressure of a mother's hand, 

And unto him it still is tremulous 

With palpitating haste and wet with tears, 

The key to him of hope and humanness, 

The coarse shell of life's pearl, Expectancy. 

This hope hath been to me for love and 

fame, 
Hath made me wholly lonely on the earth, 
Building me up as in a thick-ribbed tower, 
Wherewith en walled my watching spirit 

burned, 
Conquering its little island from the Dark, 
Sole as a scholar's lamp, and heard men's 

steps, 
In the far hurry of the outward world, 
Pass dimly forth and back, sounds heard in 

dream. 
As Ganymede by the eagle was snatched 

up 
From the gross sod to be Jove's cup-bearer, 
So was I lifted by my great design: 
And who hath trod Olympus, from his eye 
Fades not that broader outlook of the gods; 
His life's low valleys overbrow earth's 

clouds, 
And that Olympian spectre of the past 
Looms towering up in sovereign memory, 
Beckoning his soul from meaner heights of 

doom. 
Had but the shadow of the Thunderer's 

bird, 
Flashing athwart my spirit, made of me 
A swift-betraying vision's Ganymede, 
Yet to have greatly dreamed precludes low 

ends; 
Great days have ever such a morning-red, 
On such a base great futures are built up, 
And aspiration, though not put in act, 
Comes back to ask its plighted troth again, 
Still watches round its grave the unlaid 

ghost 
Of a dead virtue, and makes other hopes, 
Save that implacable one, seem thin and 

bleak 
As shadows of bare trees upon the snow, 
Bound freezing there by the unpitying 



While other youths perplexed their mando- 
lins, 

Praying that Thetis would her fingers 
twine 

In the loose glories of her lover's hair, 

And wile another kiss to keep back day, 



58 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



I, stretched beneath the many-centuried 

shade 
Of some writhed oak, the wood's Laocoon, 
Did of my hope a dryad mistress make, 
Whom I would woo to meet me privily, 
Or underneath the stars, or when the 

moon 
Flecked all the forest floor with scattered 

pearls. 

days whose memory tames to fawning 

down 
The surly fell of Ocean's bristled neck ! 

1 know not when this hope enthralled me 

first, 
But from my boyhood up I loved to hear 
The tall pine-forests of the Apennine 
Murmur their hoary legends of the sea, 
Which hearing, I in vision clear beheld 
The sudden dark of tropic night shut down 
O'er the huge whisper of great watery 

wastes, 
The while a pair of herons trailingly 
Flapped inland, where some league-wide 

river hurled 
The yellow spoil of unconjectured realms 
Far through a gulf's green silence, never 

scarred 
By any but the North-wind's hurrying 

keels. 
And not the pines alone; all sights and 

sounds 
To my world-seeking heart paid fealty, 
And catered for it as the Cretan bees 
Brought honey to the baby Jupiter, 
Who in his soft hand crushed a violet, 
Godlike foremusing the rough thunder's 

gripe ; 
Then did I entertain the poet's song, 
My great Idea's guest, and, passing o'er 
That iron bridge the Tuscan built to hell, 
I heard Ulysses tell of mountain-chains 
Whose adamantine links, his manacles, 
The western main shook growling, and 

still gnawed. 
I brooded on the wise Athenian's tale 
Of happy Atlantis, and heard Bjorne's 

keel 
Crunch the gray pebbles of the Vinland 

shore: 
I listened, musing, to the prophecy 
Of Nero's tutor-victim; lo, the birds 
Sing darkling, conscious of the climbing 

dawn. 
And I believed the poets; it is they 



Who utter wisdom from the central deep, 
And, listening to the inner flow of things, 
Speak to the age out of eternity. 

Ah me ! old hermits sought for solitude 
In caves and desert places of the earth, 
Where their own heart-beat was the only 

stir 
Of living thing that comforted the year; 
But the bald pillar-top of Simeon, 
In midnight's blankest waste, were popu- 
lous, 
Matched with the isolation drear and deep 
Of him who pines among the swarm of 

men, 
At once a new thought's king and pris- 
oner, 
Feeling the truer life within his life, 
The fountain of his spirit's prophecy, 
Sinking away and wasting, drop by drop, 
In the ungrateful sands of sceptic ears. 
He in the palace-aisles of untrod woods 
Doth walk a king; for him the pent-up 

cell 
Widens beyond the circles of the stars, 
And all the sceptred spirits of the past 
Come thronging in to greet him as their 

peer; 
But in the market-place's glare and throng 
He sits apart, an exile, and his brow 
Aches with the mocking memory of its 

crown. 
Yet to the spirit select there is no choice; 
He cannot say, This will I do, or that, 
For the cheap means putting Heaven's 

ends in pawn, 
And bartering his bleak rocks, the freehold 

stern 
Of destiny's first-born, for smoother fields 
That yield no crop of self-denying will; 
A hand is stretched to him from out the 

dark, 
Which grasping without question, he is led 
Where there is work that he must do for 

God. 
The trial still is the strength's complement, 
And the uncertain, dizzy path that scales 
The sheer heights of supremest purposes 
Is steeper to the angel than the child. 
Chances have laws as fixed as planets have, 
And disappointment's dry and bitter root, 
Envy's harsh berries, and the choking 

pool 
Of the world's scorn, are the right mother- 
milk 



AN INCIDENT OF THE FIRE AT HAMBURG 



59 



To the tough hearts that pioneer their 
kind, 

And break a pathway to those unknown 
realms 

That in the earth's broad shadow lie en- 
thralled ; 

Endurance is the crowning quality, 

And patience all the passion of great 
hearts ; 

These are their stay, and when the leaden 
world 

Sets its hard face against their fateful 
thought, 

And brute strength, like the Gaulish con- 
queror, 

Clangs his huge glaive down in the other 
scale, 

The inspired soul but flings his patience 
• in, 

And slowly that outweighs the ponderous 
globe, — 

One faith against a whole earth's unbe- 
lief, 

One soul against the flesh of all mankind. 

Thus ever seems it when my soul can hear 
The voice that errs not; then my triumph 

gleams, 
O'er the blank ocean beckoning, and all 

night 
My heart flies on before me as I sail; 
Far on I see my lifelong enterprise, 
That rose like Ganges mid the freezing 

snows 
Of a world's solitude, sweep broadening 

down, 
And, gathering to itself a thousand streams, 
Grow sacred ere it mingle with the sea; 
I see the ungated wall of chaos old, 
With blocks Cyclopean hewn of solid night, 
Fade like a wreath of unreturning mist 
Before the irreversible feet of light; — 
And lo, with what clear omen in the east 
On day's gray threshold stands the eager 

dawn, 
Like young Leander rosy from the sea 
Glowing at Hero's lattice ! 

One day more 
These muttering shoalbrains leave the 

helm to me: 
God, let me not in their dull ooze be 

stranded ; 
Let not this one frail bark, to hollow which 



I have dug out the pith and sinewy heart 
Of my aspiring life's fair trunk, be so 
Cast up to warp and blacken in the sun, 
Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle off 
His cheek-swollen pack, and from the lean- 
ing mast 
Fortune's full sail strains forward ! 

One poor day ! — 
Remember whose and not how short it is ! 
It is God's day, it is Columbus's. 
A lavish day ! One day, with life and 

heart, 
Is more than time enough to find a world. 



AN INCIDENT OF THE FIRE 
AT HAMBURG 

The tower of old Saint Nicholas soared up- 
ward to the skies, 

Like some huge piece of Nature's make, the 
growth of centuries; 

You could not deem its crowding spires a 
work of human art, 

They seemed to struggle lightward from a 
sturdy living heart. 

Not Nature's self more freely speaks in 

crystal or in oak, 
Than, through the pious builder's hand, in 

that gray pile she spoke ; 
And as from acorn springs the oak, so, 

freely and alone, 
Sprang from his heart this hymn to God, 

sung in obedient stone. 

It seemed a wondrous freak of chance, so 

perfect, yet so rough, 
A whim of Nature crystallized slowly in 

granite tough; 
The thick spires yearned towards the sky 

in quaint harmonious lines, 
And in broad sunlight basked and slept, 

like a grove of blasted pines. 

Never did rock or stream or tree lay claim 

with better right 
To all the adorning sympathies of shadow 

and of light; 
And, in that forest petrified, as forester 

there dwells 
Stout Herman, the old sacristan, sole lord 

of all its bells. 



6o 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



Surge leaping after surge, the fire roared 

onward red as blood, 
Till half of Hamburg lay engulfed beneath 

the eddying flood ; 
For miles away the fiery spray poured 

down its deadly rain, 
And back and forth the billows sucked, 

and paused, and burst again. 

From square to square with tiger leaps 

panted the lustful fire, 
The air to leeward shuddered with the 

gasps of its desire; 
And church and palace, which even now 

stood whelmed but to the knee, 
Lift their black roofs like breakers lone 

amid the whirling sea. 

Up in his tower old Herman sat and 
watched with quiet look; 

His soul had trusted God too long to be at 
last forsook; 

He could not fear, for surely God a path- 
way would unfold 

Through this red sea for faithful hearts, as 
once He did of old. 

But scarcely can he cross himself, or on his 

good saint call, 
Before the sacrilegious flood o'erleaped the 

church-yard wall; 
And, ere a pater half was said, mid smoke 

and crackling glare, 
His island tower scarce juts its head above 

the wide despair. 

Upon the peril's desperate peak his heart 

stood up sublime; 
His first thought was for God above, his 

next was for his chime ; 
"Sing now and make your voices heard in 

hymns of praise," cried he, 
" As did the Israelites of old, safe walking 

through the sea ! 

" Through this red sea our God hath made 

the pathway safe to shore; 
Our promised land stands full in sight; 

shout now as ne'er before ! " 
And as the tower came crashing down, the 

bells, in clear accord, 
Pealed forth the grand old German hymn, 
— " All good souls, praise the 

Lord ! " 



THE SOWER 

I SAW a Sower walking slow 

Across the earth, from east to west; 

His hair was white as mountain snow, 
His head drooped forward on his breast. 

With shrivelled hands he flung his seed, 
Nor ever turned to look behind; 

Of sight or sound he took no heed; 
It seemed he was both deaf and blind. 

His dim face showed no soul beneath, 

Yet in my heart I felt a stir, 
As if I looked upon the sheath, 

That once had held Excalibur. 

I heard, as still the seed he cast, 
How, crooning to himself, he sung, 

" I sow again the holy Past, 

The happy days when I was young. 

" Then all was wheat without a tare, 
Then all was righteous, fair, and true; 

And I am he whose thoughtful care 
Shall plant the Old World in the New. 

" The fruitful germs I scatter free, 
With busy hand, while all men sleep; 

In Europe now, from sea to sea, 
The nations bless me as they reap." 

Then I looked back along his path, 
And heard the clash of steel on steel, 

Where man faced man, in deadly, wrath, 
While clanged the tocsin's hurrying peal. 

The sky with burning towns flared red, 
Nearer the noise of fighting rolled, 



And brothers' blood, by brothers shed, 



Crept curdling over pavements cold. 



Then marked I how each germ of truth 
Which through the dotard's fingers ran 

Was mated with a dragon's tooth 

Whence there sprang up an armed man. 

I shouted, but he could not hear; 

Made signs, but these he could not see; 
And still, without a doubt or fear, 

Broadcast he scattered anarchy. 

Long to my straining ears the blast 

Brought faintly back the words he sung: 



THE LANDLORD 



61 



" I sow again the holy Past, 


You 're not clogged with foolish pride, 


The happy days when I was young." 


But can seize a right denied: 




Somehow God is on your side, 




Hunger and Cold ! 


HUNGER AND COLD 






You respect no hoary wrong 


Sisters two, all praise to you, 


More for having triumphed long; 


With your faces pinched and blue ; 


Its past victims, haggard throng 


To the poor man you 've been true 


From the mould 


From of old: 


You unbury: swords and spears 


You can speak the keenest word, 


Weaker are than poor men's tears, 


You are sure of being heard, 


Weaker than your silent years, 


From the point you 're never stirred, 
Hunger and Cold ! 


Hunger and Cold ! 


Let them guard both hall and bower; 


Let sleek statesmen temporize; 


Through the window you will glower, 


Palsied are their shifts and lies 


Patient till your reckoning hour 


When they meet your bloodshot eyes, 


Shall be tolled; 


Grim and bold; 


Cheeks are pale, but hands are red, 


Policy you set at naught, 


Guiltless blood may chance be shed, 


In their traps you '11 not be caught, 


But ye must and will be fed, 


You 're too honest to be bought, 


Hunger and Cold ! 


Hunger and Cold ! 






God has plans man must not spoil, 


Bolt and bar the palace door; 


Some were made to starve and toil, 


While the mass of men are poor, 


Some to share the wine and oil, 


Naked truth grows more and more 


We are told: 


Uncontrolled; 


Devil's theories are these, 


You had never yet, I guess, 


Stifling hope and love and peace, 


Any praise for bashfulness, 


Framed your hideous lusts to please, 


You can visit sans court-dress, 


Hunger and Cold ! 


Hunger and Cold ! 






Scatter ashes on thy head, 


While the music fell and rose, 


Tears of burning sorrow shed, 


And the dance reeled to its close, 


Earth ! and be by Pity led 


Wliere her round of costly woes 


To Love's fold; 


Fashion strolled, 


Ere they block the very door 


I beheld with shuddering fear 


With lean corpses of the poor, 


Wolves' eyes through the windows peer; 


And will hush for naught but gore, 


Little dream they you are near, 


Hunger and Cold ! 


Hunger and Cold ! 




When the toiler's heart you clutch, 


THE LANDLORD 


Conscience is not valued much, 




He recks not a bloody smutch 


What boot your houses and your lands ? 


On his gold: 


In spite of close-drawn deed and fence, 


Everything to you defers, 


Like water, 'twixt your cheated hands, 


You are potent reasoners, 


They slip into the graveyard's sands, 


At your whisper Treason stirs, 


And mock your ownership's pretence. 


Hunger and Cold ! 






How shall you speak to urge your right, 


Rude comparisons you draw. 


Choked with that soil for which you lust ? 


Words refuse to sate your maw, 


The bit of clay, for whose delight 


Your gaunt limbs the cobweb law 


You grasp, is mortgaged, too ; Death might 


Cannot hold: 


Foreclose this very day in dust. 



62 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



Fence as you please, this plain poor man, 

Whose only fields are in his wit, 
Who shapes the world, as best he can, 
According to God's higher plan, 
Owns you, and fences as is fit. 

Though yours the rents, his incomes wax 

By right of eminent domain; 
From factory tall to woodman's axe, 
All things on earth must pay their tax, 
To feed his hungry heart and brain. 

He takes you from your easy-chair, 

And what he plans that you must do; 
You sleep in down, eat dainty fare, — 
He mounts his crazy garret-stair 
And starves, the landlord over you. 

Feeding the clods your idlesse drains, 

You make more green six feet of soil; 
His fruitful word, like suns and rains, 
Partakes the seasons' bounteous pains, 
And toils to lighten human toil. 

Your lands, with force or cunning got, 
Shrink to the measure of the grave ; 
But Death himself abridges not 
The tenures of almighty thought, 
The titles of the wise and brave. 



TO A PINE-TREE 

Lowell's friend C. F. Briggs called the poet's 
attention to Coleridge's lines in The Ancient 
Mariner, 

" And ice, mast high, came floating by 
As green as emerald," 

as perhaps the literary justification of " crags 
of green ice " in the penultimate stanza of this 
poem, — but maintained nevertheless that the 
epithet green was not true to nature. In his 
reply Lowell wrote : " I did not have Cole- 
ridge's lines in my mind when I wrote my 
verses. Coleridge had a fine, true eye, and I 
would gladly accept him (if I wanted any aid) 
in confirmation. I did trust my own eye. 
When I was a boy, my favorite sport was sail- 
ing upon Fresh Pond in summer, and in winter 
helping the hardy reapers to get in their har- 
vest of ice, and never was a field of wheat in 
July of a more lovely green. You have doubt- 
less seen ice-bugs (as most people entomologi- 
cally pronounce it), and they may not be green, 
though I think they are described as of all 
colors. But my ice was fresh-water ice, and I 
am right about it." 



Far up on Katahdin thou towerest, 

Purple-blue with the distance and vast; 
Like a cloud o'er the lowlands thou lower- 
est, 
That hangs poised on a lull in the blast, 
To its fall leaning awful. 

In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, 

Thou singest and tossest thy branches; 
Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, 
Thou forebodest the dread avalanches, 
When whole mountains swoop vale- 
ward. 

In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys 
With thine arms, as if blessings implor- 
ing, 
Like an old king led forth from his palace, 
When his people to battle are pouring 
From the city beneath him. 

To the lumberer asleep 'neath thy gloom- 
ing 
Thou dost sing of wild billows in motion, 
Till he longs to be swung mid their boom- 
ing 
In the tents of the Arabs of ocean, 
Whose finned isles are their cattle. 

For the gale snatches thee for his lyre, 
With mad hand crashing melody frantic, 

While he pours forth his mighty desire 
To leap down on the eager Atlantic, 
Whose arms stretch to his playmate. 

The wild storm makes his lair in thy 
branches, 
Swooping thence on the continent under; 
Like a lion, crouched close on his haunches, 
There awaiteth his leap the fierce thun- 
der, 
Growling low with impatience. 

Spite of winter, thou keep'st thy green 
glory, 
Lusty father of Titans past number ! 
The snow-flakes alone make thee hoary, 
Nestling close to thy branches in slum- 
ber, 
And thee mantling with silence. 

Thou alone know'st the splendor of winter, 
Mid thy snow-silvered, hushed precipices, 
Hearing crags of green ice groan and splin- 
ter, 



TO THE PAST 



63 



And then plunge down the muffled 
abysses 
In the quiet of midnight. 

Thou alone know'st the glory of summer, 

Gazing down on thy broad seas of forest, 
On thy subjects that send a proud mur- 
mur 
Up to thee, to their sachem, who tower- 
est 
From thy bleak throne to heaven. 



SI DESCENDERO IN INFERNUM, 
ADES 

O wandering dim on the extremest edge 
Of God's bright providence, whose spirits 
sigh 
Drearily in you, like the winter sedge 
That shivers o'er the dead pool stiff and 

dry, 
A thin, sad voice, when the bold wind 
roars by 
From the clear North of Duty, — 
Still by cracked arch and broken shaft I 

trace 
That here was once a shrine and holy place 
Of the supernal Beauty, 
A child's play-altar reared of stones and 

moss, 
With wilted flowers for offering laid 
across, 
Mute recognition of the all-ruling Grace. 

How far are ye from the innocent, from 
those 
Whose hearts are as a little lane serene, 
Smooth-heaped from wall to wall with un- 
broke snows, 
Or in the summer blithe with lamb- 
cropped green, 
Save the one track, where naught more 
rude is seen 
Than the plump wain at even 
Bringing home four months' sunshine 

bound in sheaves ! 
How far are ye from those ! yet who be- 
lieves 
That ye can shut out heaven ? 
Your souls partake its influence, not in 

vain 
ISTor all unconscious, as that silent lane 
Its drift of noiseless apple-blooms receives. 



Looking within myself, I note how thin 
A plank of station, chance, or prosperous 
fate, 
Doth fence me from the clutching waves of 
sin; 
In my own heart I find the worst man's 

mate, 
And see not dimly the smooth-hinged 
gate 
That opes to those abysses 
Where ye grope darkly, — ye who never 

knew 
On your young hearts love's consecrating 
dew, 
Or felt a mother's kisses, 
Or home's restraining tendrils round you 

curled; 
Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this 
world 
The fatal nightshade grows and bitter rue ! 

One band ye cannot break, — the force that 
clips 
And grasps your circles to the central 
light; 
Yours is the prodigal comet's long ellipse, 
Self - exiled to the farthest verge of 

night; 
Yet strives with you no less that inward 
might 
No sin hath e'er imbruted; 
The god in you the creed-dimmed eye 

eludes; 
The Law brooks not to have its solitudes 
By bigot feet polluted; 
Yet they who watch your God-compelled 

return 
May see your happy perihelion burn 
Where the calm sun his unfledged planets 
broods. 



TO THE PAST 

Wondrous and awful are thy silent halls,. 

O kingdom of the past ! 

There lie the bygone ages in their palls, 

Guarded by shadows vast; 

There all is hushed and breathless, 

Save when some image of old error falls 

Earth worshipped once as deathless. 

There sits drear Egypt, mid beleaguering 



Half woman and half beast, 



6 4 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



The burnt-out torch within her mouldering 
hands 
That once lit all the East; 
A dotard bleared and hoary, 
There Asser crouches o'er the blackened 
brands 
Of Asia's long-quenched glory. 

Still as a city buried 'neath the sea 
Thy courts and temples stand; 
Idle as forms on wind-waved tapestry 
Of saints and heroes grand, 
Thy phantasms grope and shiver, 
Or watch the loose shores crumbling si- 
lently 
Into Time's gnawing river. 

Titanic shapes with faces blank and dun, 

Of their old godhead lorn, 
Gaze on the embers of the sunken sun, 
Which they misdeem for morn; 
And yet the eternal sorrow 
In their unmonarched eyes says day is done 
Without the hope of morrow. 

O realm of silence and of swart eclipse, 

The shapes that haunt thy gloom 
Make signs to us and move their withered 
lips 
Across the gulf of doom; 
Yet all their sound and motion 
Bring no more freight to us than wraiths 
of ships 
On the mirage's ocean. 

And if sometimes a moaning wandereth 

From out thy desolate halls, 
If some grim shadow of thy living death 
Across our sunshine falls 
And scares the world to error, 
The eternal life sends forth melodious 
breath 
To chase the misty terror. 

Thy mighty clamors, wars, and world- 
noised deeds 
Are silent now in dust, 
Gone like a tremble of the huddling reeds 
Beneath some sudden gust; 
Thy forms and creeds have vanished, 
Tossed out to wither like unsightly weeds 
From the world's garden banished. 

Whatever of true life there was in thee 
3 in our age's veins; 



Wield still thy bent and wrinkled em- 
pery, 
And shake thine idle chains; — 
To thee thy dross is clinging, 
For us thy martyrs die, thy prophets 
see, 
Thy poets still are singing. 

Here, mid the bleak waves of our strife 
and care, 
Float the green Fortunate Isles 
Where all thy hero-spirits dwell, and share 
Our martyrdoms and toils; 
The present moves attended 
With all of brave and excellent and fair 
That made the old time splendid. 



TO THE FUTURE 

O Land of Promise ! from what Pisgah's 
height 
Can I behold thy stretch of peaceful 
bowers, 
Thy golden harvests flowing out of sight, 
Thy nestled homes and sun-illumined 

towers ? 
Gazing upon the sunset's high-heaped 
gold, 
Its crags of opal and of chrysolite, 

Its deeps on deeps of glory, that un- 
fold 
Still brightening abysses, 
And blazing precipices, 
Whence but a scanty leap it seems to 
heaven, 
Sometimes a glimpse is given 
Of thy more gorgeous realm, thy more un- 
stinted blisses. 

O Land of Quiet ! to thy shore the surf 

Of the perturbed Present rolls and sleeps; 
Our storms breathe soft as June upon thy 
turf 
And lure out blossoms; to thy bosom 
leaps, 
As to a mother's, the o'erwearied heart, 
Hearing far off and dim the toiling mart, 
The hurrying feet, the curses without 
number, 
And, circled with the glow Elysian 
Of thine exulting vision, 
Out of its very cares wooes charms for 
peace and slumber. 



HEBE 



65 



To thee the earth lifts up her fettered 
hands 
And cries for vengeance ; with a pitying 
smile 
Thou blessest her, and she forgets her 
bands, 
And her old woe- worn face a little while 
Grows young and noble; unto thee the 
Oppressor 
Looks, and is dumb with awe ; 
The eternal law, 
Which makes the crime its own blindfold 

redresser, 
Shadows his heart with perilous foreboding, 
And he can see the grim-eyed Doom 
From out the trembling gloom 
Its silent-footed steeds towards his palace 
goading. 

What promises hast thou for Poets' eyes, 

A-weary of the turmoil and the wrong ! 
To all their hopes what overjoyed replies ! 
What undreamed ecstasies for blissful 
song ! 
Thy happy plains no war-trump's brawling 
clangor 
Disturbs, and fools the poor to hate the 
poor; 
The humble glares not on the high with 
anger; 
Love leaves no grudge at less, no greed 
for more; 
In vain strives Self the godlike sense to 
smother; 
From the soul's deeps 
It throbs and leaps; 
The noble 'neath foul rags beholds his long- 
lost brother. 

To thee the Martyr looketh, and his fires 
Unlock their fangs and leave his spirit 
free; 
To thee the Poet mid his toil aspires, 

And grief and hunger climb about his 
knee, 
Welcome as children; thou upholdest 

The lone Inventor by his demon haunted ; 
The Prophet cries to thee when hearts are 
coldest, 
And gazing o'er the midnight's bleak 

abyss, 
Sees the drowsed soul awaken at thy 
kiss, 
And stretch its happy arms and leap up 
disenchanted. 



Thou bringest vengeance, but so loving- 
kindly 
The guilty thinks it pity; taught by thee, 
Fierce tyrants drop the scourges where- 
with blindly 
Their own souls they were scarring; con- 
querors see 
With horror in their hands the accursed 
spear 
That tore the meek One's side on Cal- 
vary, 
And from their trophies shrink with 
ghastly fear; 
Thou, too, art the Forgiver, 
The beauty of man's soul to man reveal- 
ing; 
The arrows from thy quiver 
Pierce Error's guilty heart, but only pierce 
for healing. 

Oh, whither, whither, glory-winged dreams, 
From out Life's sweat and turmoil would 
ye bear me ? 
Shut, gates of Fancy, on your golden 
gleams, — 
This agony of hopeless contrast spare me ! 
Fade, cheating glow, and leave me to my 
night ! 
He is a coward, who would borrow 
A charm against the present sorrow 
From the vague Future's promise of de- 
light: 
As life's alarums nearer roll, 
The ancestral buckler calls, 
Self-clanging from the walls 
In the high temple of the soul; 
Where are most sorrows, there the poet's 
sphere is, 
To feed the soul with patience, 
To heal its desolations 
With words of unshorn truth, with love 
that never wearies. 



HEBE 

I SAW the twinkle of white feet, 
I saw the flash of robes descending; 

Before her ran an influence fleet, 
That bowed my heart like barley bending. 

As, in bare fields, the searching bees 
Pilot to blooms beyond our finding, 

It led me on, by sweet degrees 
Joy's simple honey-cells unbinding. 



66 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



Those Graces were that seemed grim 
Fates; 
With nearer love the sky leaned o'er me ; 

The long-sought Secret's golden gates 
On musical hinges swung before me. 

I saw the brimmed bowl in her grasp 
Thrilling with godhood; like a lover 

I sprang the proffered life to clasp ; — 
The beaker fell; the luck was over. 

The Earth has drunk the vintage up; 
What boots it patch the goblet's splin- 
ters ? 

Can Summer fill the icy cup, 
Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter's ? 

O spendthrift haste ! await the Gods; 
The nectar crowns the lips of Patience; 

Haste scatters on unthankful sods 
The immortal gift in vain libations. 

Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, 
And shuns the hands would seize upon her; 

Follow thy life, and she will sue 
To pour for thee the cup of honor. 



THE SEARCH 

I went to seek for Christ, 
And Nature seemed so fair 
That first the woods and fields my youth 
enticed, 
And I was sure to find him there: 
The temple I forsook, 
And to the solitude 
Allegiance paid; but winter came and 
shook 
The crown and purple from my wood; 
His snows, like desert sands, with scornful 
drift, 
Besieged the columned aisle and palace- 
gate; 
My Thebes, cut deep with many a solemn 
rift, 
But epitaphed her own sepulchred state: 
Then I remember whom I went to seek, 
And blessed blunt Winter for his counsel 
bleak. 

Back to the world I turned, 
For Christ, I said, is King; 
So the cramped alley and the hut I 
spurned, 



As far beneath his sojourning: 
Mid power and wealth I sought, 
But found no trace of him, 
And all the costly offerings I had brought 
With sudden rust and mould grew dim: 
I found his tomb, indeed, where, by their 
laws, 
All must on stated days themselves im- 
prison, 
Mocking with bread a dead creed's grin- 
ning jaws, 
Witless how long the life had thence 
arisen; 
Due sacrifice to this they set apart, 
Prizing it more than Christ's own living 
heart. 



So from my feet the dust 
Of the proud World I shook; 
Then came dear Love and shared with me 
his crust, 
And half my sorrow's burden took. 
After the World's soft bed, 
Its rich and dainty fare, 
Like down seemed Love's coarse pillow to 
my head, 
His cheap food seemed as manna rare ; 
Fresh-trodden prints of bare and bleeding 
feet, 
Turned to the heedless city whence I 
came, 
Hard by I saw, and springs of worship 
sweet 
Gushed from my cleft heart smitten by 
the same; 
Love looked me in the face and spake no 

words, 
But straight I knew those footprints were 
the Lord's. 






I followed where they led, 
And in a hovel rude, 
With naught to fence the weather from 
his head, 
The King I sought for meekly stood ; 
A naked, hungry child 
Clung round his gracious knee, 
And a poor hunted slave looked up and 
smiled 
To bless the smile that set him free; 
New miracles I saw his presence do, — 

No more I knew the hovel bare and poor, 
The gathered chips into a wood-pile grew 
The broken morsel swelled to goodly 
store ; 



THE PRESENT CRISIS 



I knelt and wept: my Christ no more I seek, 
His throne is with the outcast and the 
weak. 



THE PRESENT CRISIS 
Dated December, 1844. 

When a deed is done for Freedom, through 

the broad earth's aching breast 
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling 

on from east to west, 
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels 

the soul within him climb 
To the awful verge of manhood, as the 

energy sublime 
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the 

thorny stem of Time. 

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots 

the instantaneous throe, 
When the travail of the Ages wrings 

earth's systems to and fro; 
At the birth of each new Era, with a recog 7 

nizing start, 
Nation wildly looks at nation, standing 

with mute lips apart, 
And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child 

leaps beneath the Future's heart. 

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a 
terror and a chill, 

Under continent to continent, the sense of 
coming ill, 

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels 
his sympathies with God 

In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be 
drunk up by the sod, 

Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delv- 
ing in the nobler clod. 



^ 



For mankind are one in spirit, and an in- 
stinct bears along, 

Round the earth's electric circle, the swift 
flash of right or wrong; 

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet 
Humanity's vast frame 

Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the 
gush of joy or shame ; — 

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest 
have equal claim. 

Once to every man and nation comes the 
moment to decide, 



67 

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for 

the good or evil side; 
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, 

offering each the bloom or blight, 
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the 

sheep upon the right, 
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that 

darkness and that light. 

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose 

party thou shalt stand, 
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes 

the dust against our land ? 
Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 't is 

Truth alone is strong, 
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see 

around her throng 
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield 

her from all wrong. 

Backward look across the ages and the 

beacon-moments see, 
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, 

jut through Oblivion's sea; 
Not an ear in court or market for the low 

foreboding cry 
Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, 

from whose feet earth's chaff must fly ; 
Never shows the choice momentous till the 

judgment hath passed by. 

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's 
pages but record 

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt 
old systems and the Word ; 

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong for- 
ever on the throne, — 

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, be- 
hind the dim unknown, 

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping 
watch above his own. 

We see dimly in the Present what is small 

and what is great, 
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn 

the iron helm of fate, 
But the soul is still oracular; amid the 

market's din, 
List the ominous stern whisper from the 

Delphic cave within, — 
" They enslave their children's children who 

make compromise with sin." 

Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, f ellest of 
the giant brdocfp 



68 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



ions of brutish Force and Darkness, who 

have drenched the earth with blood, 
Famished in his self-made desert, blinded 

by our purer day, 
Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his 

miserable prey ; — 
Shall we guide his gory fingers where our 

helpless children play ? 

Then to side with Truth is noble when we 

share her wretched crust, 
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 

't is prosperous to be just; 
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the 

coward stands aside, 
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord 

is crucified, 
And the multitude make virtue of the faith 

they had denied. 

Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, — 

they were souls that stood alone, 
While the men they agonized for hurled 

the contumelious stone, 
Stood serene, and down the future saw the 

golden beam incline 
To the side of perfect justice, mastered by 

their faith divine, 
By one man's plain truth to manhood and 

to God's supreme design. 

By the light of burning heretics Christ's 

bleeding feet I track, 
Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the 

cross that turns not back, 
And these mounts of anguish number how 

each generation learned 
One new word of that grand Credo which 

in prophet-hearts hath burned 
Since the first man stood God-conquered 

with his face to heaven upturned. 

For Humanity sweeps onward: where to- 
day the martyr stands, 

On the morrow crouches Judas with the 
silver in his hands; 

Far in front the cross stands ready and the 
crackling fagots burn, 

While the hooting mob of yesterday in 
silent awe return 

To glean up the scattered ashes into His- 
tory's golden urn. 

'T is as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle 
slaves 



Of a legendary virtue carved upon our 

father's graves, 
Worshippers of light ancestral make the 

present light a crime; — 
Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, 

steered by men behind their time ? 
Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, 

that make Plymouth Rock sublime ? 

They were men of present valor, stalwart 
old iconoclasts, 

Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all vir- 
tue was the Past's; 

But we make their truth our falsehood, 
thinking that hath made us free, 

Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while 
our tender spirits flee 

The rude grasp of that great Impulse which 
drove them across the sea. 

They have rights who dare maintain them; 

we are traitors to our sires, 
Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's 

new-lit altar-fires; 
Shall we make their creed our jailer ? 

Shall we, in our haste to slay, 
From the tombs of the old prophets steal 

the funeral lamps away 
To light up the martyr-fagots round the 

prophets of to-day ? 

New occasions teach new duties; Time 

makes ancient good uncouth; 
They must upward still, and onward, who 

would keep abreast of Truth; 
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires ! we 

ourselves must Pilgrims be, 
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly 

through the desperate winter sea, 
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the 

Past's blood-rusted key. 



AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 

The reader familiar with Lowell's life will 
readily recognize the local references which 
occur in this poem. To others it may be worth 
while to point out that the village smithy is 
the same as that commemorated by Long- 
fellow, that Allston lived in the section of 
Cambridge known as Cambridgeport, that some 
of the old willows at the causey's end still 
stand, and that the group is the one which 
gave the name to Under the Willows. 



AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 



69 



What visionary tints the year puts on, 
When falling leaves falter through mo- 
tionless air 
Or humbly cling and shiver to be gone ! 
How shimmer the low flats and pastures 
bare, 
As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 
The bowl between me and those distant 
hills, 
And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, 
tremulous hair ! 

No more the landscape holds its 
wealth apart, 
Making me poorer in my poverty, 

But mingles with my senses and my 
heart ; 
My own projected spirit seems to me 
In her own reverie the world to steep; 
'T is she that waves to sympathetic 



Moving, as she is moved, each field and hill 
and tree. 

How fuse and mix, with what unfelt 
degrees, 
Clasped by the faint horizon's languid 
arms, 
Each into each, the hazy distances ! 
The softened season all the landscape 
charms ; 
Those hills, my native village that 

embay, 
In waves of dreamier purple roll away, 
And floating in mirage seem all the glim- 
mering farms. 

Far distant sounds the hidden chicka- 
dee 
Close at my side ; far distant sound the 
leaves; 
The fields seem fields of dream, where 
Memory 
Wanders like gleaning Ruth; and as the 
sheaves 
Of wheat and barley wavered in the 

eye 
Of Boaz as the maiden's glow went by, 
So tremble and seem remote all things the 
sense receives. 

The cock's shrill trump that tells of 
scattered corn, 
Passed breezily on by all his flapping 
mates, 



Faint and more faint, from barn to 
barn is borne, 
Southward, perhaps to far Magellan's 
Straits; 
Dimly I catch the throb of distant 

flails ; 
Silently overhead the hen-hawk sails, 
With watchful, measuring eye, and for his 
quarry waits. 

The sobered robin, hunger-silent now, 
Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn 
cheer; 
The chipmunk, on the shingly shag- 
bark's bough 
]STow saws, now lists with downward eye 
and ear, 
Then drops his nut, and, cheeping, 

with a bound 
Whisks to his winding fastness under- 
ground ; 
The clouds like swans drift down the 
streaming atmosphere. 

O'er yon bare knoll the pointed cedar 
shadows 
Drowse on the crisp, gray moss; the 
ploughman's call 
Creeps faint as smoke from black, 
fresh-furrowed meadows; 
The single crow a single caw lets fall; 
And all around me every bush and 

tree 
Says Autumn's here, and Winter soon 
will be, 
Who snows his soft, white sleep and silence 
over all. 

The birch, most shy and ladylike of 
trees, 
Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, 

And hints at her foregone gentilities 
With some saved relics of her wealth of 
leaves ; 
The swamp-oak, with his royal purple 

on, 
Glares red as blood across the sinking 
sun, 
As one who proudlier to a falling fortune 
cleaves. 

He looks a sachem, in red blanket 
wrapt, 
Who, mid some council of the sad-garbed 
whites, 



7° 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



Erect and stern, in his own memories 
lapt, 
With distant eye broods over other 
sights, 

Sees the hushed wood the city's flare 
replace, 

The wounded turf heal o'er the rail- 
way's trace, 
And roams the savage Past of his un- 
dwindled rights. 

The red-oak, softer-grained, yields all 
for lost, 
And, with his crumpled foliage stiff and 

d-y, 

After the first betrayal of the frost, 
Rebuffs the kiss of the relenting sky; 
The chestnuts, lavish of their long-hid 

gold, 
To the faint Summer, beggared now 
and old, 
Pour back the sunshine hoarded 'neath her 
favoring eye. 

The ash her purple drops forgivingly 
And sadly, breaking not the general 
hush; 
The maple-swamps glow like a sunset 
sea, 
Each leaf a ripple with its separate 
flush; 
All round the wood's edge creeps the 

skirting blaze 
Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy 
days, 
Ere the rain fall, the cautious farmer burns 
his brush. 

O'er yon low wall, which guards one 
unkempt zone, 
Where vines and weeds and scrub-oaks 
intertwine 
Safe from the plough, whose rough, 
discordant stone 
Is massed to one soft gray by lichens 
fine, 
The tangled blackberry, crossed and 

recrossed, weaves 
A prickly network of ensanguined 
leaves ; 
Hard by, with coral beads, the prim black- 
alders shine. 

Pillaring with flame this crumbling 
boundary, 



Whose loose blocks topple 'neath the 
ploughboy's foot, 
Who, with each sense shut fast except 
the eye, 
Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped 
to shoot, 
The woodbine up the elm's straight 

stem aspires, 
Coiling it, harmless, with autumnal 
fires; 
In the ivy's paler blaze the martyr oak 
stands mute. 

Below, the Charles, a stripe of nether 
sky, 
Now hid by rounded apple-trees between, 
Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps 
bellying by, 
Now flickering golden through a wood- 
land screen, 
Then spreading out, at his next turn 

beyond, 
A silver circle like an inland pond — 
Slips seaward silently through marshes 
purple and green. 

Dear marshes ! vain to him the gift of 
sight 
Who cannot in their various incomes share, 
From every season drawn, of shade 
and light, 
Who sees in them but levels brown and 
bare ; 
Each change of storm or sunshine 

scatters free 
On them its largess of variety, 
For Nature with cheap means still works 
her wonders rare. 

In Spring they lie one broad expanse 
of green, 
O'er which the light winds run with 
glimmering feet: 
Here, yellower stripes track out the 
creek unseen, 
There, darker growths o'er hidden 
ditches meet; 
And purpler stains show where the 

blossoms crowd, 
As if the silent shadow of a cloud 
Hung there becalmed, with the next breath 
to fleet. 

All round, upon the river's slippe: 
edge, 



AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 



7i 



Witching- to deeper calni the drowsy tide, 


Or come when sunset gives its fresh- 


Whispers and leans the breeze-entan- 


ened zest, 


gling sedge; 


Lean o'er the bridge and let the ruddy 


Through emerald glooms the lingering 


thrill, 


waters slide, 


While the shorn sun swells down the 


Or, sometimes wavering, throw back 


hazy west, 


the sun, 


Glow opposite ; — the marshes drink 


And the stiff banks in eddies melt and 


their fill 


run 


And swoon with purple veins, then 


Of dimpling light, and with the current 


slowly fade 


seem to glide. 


Through pink to brown, as eastward 




moves the shade, 


In Summer 't is a blithesome sight to 


Lengthening with stealthy creep, of Si- 


see, 


mond's darkening hill. 


As, step by step, with measured swing, 




they pass, 


Later, and yet ere Winter wholly 


The wide-ranked mowers wading to 


shuts, 


the knee, 


Ere through the first dry snow the run- 


Their sharp scythes panting through the 


ner grates, 


wiry grass; 


And the loath cart-wheel screams in 


Then, stretched beneath a rick's shade 


slippery ruts, 


in a ring, 


While firmer ice the eager boy awaits, 


Their nooning take, while one begins 


Trying each buckle and strap beside 


to sing 


the fire, 


A stave that droops and dies 'neath the 


And until bedtime plays with his de- 


close sky of brass. 


sire, 




Twenty times putting on and off his new- 


Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the 


bought skates; — 


bobolink, 




Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops 


Then, every morn, the river's banks 


Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's 


shine bright 


tremulous brink, 


With smooth plate -armor, treacherous 


And 'twixt the winrows most demurely 


and frail, 


drops, 


By the frost's clinking hammers forged 


A decorous bird of business, who pro- 


at night, 


vides 


'Gainst which the lances of the sun pre- 


Eor his brown mate and fledglings six 


vail, 


besides, 


Giving a pretty emblem of the day 


And looks from right to left, a farmer mid 


When guiltier arms in light shall melt 


his crops. 


away, 




And states shall move free-limbed, loosed 


Another change subdues them in the 
Fall, 


from war's cramping mail. 


But saddens not; they still show merrier 


And now those waterfalls the ebbing 


Though sober russet seems to cover 


river 
Twice every day creates on either side 


all; 


Tinkle, as through their fresh-sparred 


When the first sunshine through their 


grots they shiver 


dew-drops glints, 


In grass-arched channels to the sun de- 


Look how the yellow clearness, 


nied; 


streamed across, 


High flaps in sparkling blue the far- 


Redeems with rarer hues the season's 


heard crow, 


loss, 


The silvered flats gleam frostily below, 


As Dawn's feet there had touched and left 


Suddenly drops the gull and breaks the 


their rosy prints. 


glassy tide. 



7 2 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



But crowned in turn by vying seasons 
three, 
Their winter halo hath a fuller ring; 

This glory seems to rest immovably, — 
The others were too fleet and vanish- 
ing; 
When the hid tide is at its highest 

flow, 
O'er marsh and stream one breathless 
trance of snow 
With brooding fulness awes and hushes 
everything. 

The sunshine seems blown off by the 
bleak wind, 
As pale as formal candles lit by day; 
Gropes to the sea the river dumb and 
blind; 
The brown ricks, snow-thatched by the 
storm in play, 
Show pearly breakers combing o'er 

their lee, 
White crests as of some just enchanted 
sea, 
Checked in their maddest leap and hanging 
poised midway. 

But when the eastern blow, with rain 
aslant, 
From mid-sea's prairies green and rolling 
plains 
Drives in his wallowing herds of bil- 
lows gaunt, 
And the roused Charles remembers in 
his veins 
Old Ocean's blood and snaps his 

gyves of frost, 
That tyrannous silence on the shores is 
tost 
In dreary wreck, and crumbling desolation 
reigns. 

Edgewise or flat, in Druid-like device, 
With leaden pools between or gullies 
bare, 
The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stone- 
henge of ice; 
No life, no sound, to break the grim 
despair, 
Save sullen plunge, as through the 

sedges stiff 
Down crackles riverward some thaw- 
sapped cliff, 
Or when the close-wedged fields of ice 
crunch here and there. 



But let me turn from fancy-pictured 
scenes 
To that whose pastoral calm before me 
lies : 
Here nothing harsh or rugged inter- 
venes; 
The early evening with her misty dyes 
Smooths off the ravelled edges of the 

nigh, 
Relieves the distant with her cooler sky, 
And tones the landscape down, and soothes 
the wearied eyes. 

There gleams my native village, dear 
to me, 
Though higher change's waves each day 
are seen, 
Whelming fields famed in boyhood's 
history, 
Sanding with houses the diminished 
green ; 
There, in red brick, which softening 

time defies, 
Stand square and stiff the Muses' 
factories ; — 
How with my life knit up is every well- 
known scene ! 

Flow on, dear river ! not alone you flow 
To outward sight, and through your 
marshes wind; 
Fed from the mystic springs of long- 
ago, 
Your twin flows silent through my world 
of mind: 
Grow dim, dear marshes, in the even- 
ing's gray ! 
Before my inner sight ye stretch away, 
And will forever, though these fleshly eyes 
grow blind. 

Beyond the hillock's house-bespotted 
swell, 
Where Gothic chapels house the horse 
and chaise, 
Where quiet cits in Grecian temples 
dwell, 
Where Coptic tombs resound with prayer 
and praise, 
Where dust and mud the equal year 

divide, 
There gentle Allston lived, and 
wrought, and died, 
Transfiguring street and shop with 
illumined gaze. 



AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 



73 



Virgilium vidi tantum, — I have seen 
But as a boy, who looks alike on all, 
That misty hair, that fine Undine-like 
mien, 
Tremulous as down to feeling's faintest 
call; — 
Ah, dear old homestead ! count it to 

thy fame 
That thither many times the Painter 
came; — 
One elm yet bears his name, a feathery tree 
and tall. 

Swiftly the present fades in memory's 
glow, — 
Our only sure possession is the past; 
The village blacksmith died a month 
ago, 
And dim to me the forge's roaring blast; 
Soon fire - new mediaevals we shall 

see 
Oust the black smithy from its chest- 
nut-tree, 
And that hewn down, perhaps, the beehive 
green and vast. 

How many times, prouder than king 
on throne, 
Loosed from the village school-dame's 
A's and B's, 
Panting have I the creaky bellows 
blown, 
And watched the pent volcano's red in- 
crease, 
Then paused to see the ponderous 

sledge, brought down 
By that hard arm volumiuous and 
brown, 
From the white iron swarm its golden van- 
ishing bees. 

Dear native town ! whose choking elms 
each year 
"With eddying dust before their time turn 
.gray, 
Pining for rain, — to me thy dust is 
dear; 
It glorifies the eve of summer day, 
And when the westering sun half 

sunken burns, 
The mote-thick air to deepest orange 
turns, 
The westward horseman rides through 
clouds of gold away, 



So palpable, I 've seen those unshorn 
few, 
The six old willows at the causey's end 
(Such trees Paul Potter never dreamed 
nor drew), 
Through this dry mist their checkering 
shadows send, 
Striped, here and there, with many a 

long-drawn thread, 
Where streamed through leafy chinks 
the trembling red, 
Past which, in one bright trail, the hang- 
bird's flashes blend. 

Yes, dearer far thy dust than all that 
e'er, 
Beneath the awarded crown of victory, 

Gilded the blown Olympic charioteer; 
Though lightly prized the ribboned 
parchments three, 
Yet collegisse juvat, I am glad 
That here what colleging was mine I 
had, — 
It linked another tie, dear native town, 
with thee ! 

Nearer art thou than simply native 
earth, 
My dust with thine concedes a deeper 
tie; 
A closer claim thy soil may well put 
forth, 
Something of kindred more than sympa- 
thy; 
For in thy bounds I reverently laid 

away 
That blinding anguish of forsaken 
clay, 
That title I seemed to have in earth and 
sea and sky, 

That portion of my life more choice to 
me 
(Though brief, yet in itself so round and 
whole) 
Than all the imperfect residue can 
be; — 
The Artist saw his statue of the soul 
Was perfect; so, with one regretful 

stroke, 
The earthen model into fragments 
broke, 
And without her the impoverished seasons 
roll. 



74 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



THE GROWTH OF THE LEGEND 

A FRAGMENT 

A legend that grew in the forest's hush 
Slowly as tear-drops gather and gush, 
When a word some poet chanced to say 
Ages ago, in his careless way, 
Brings our youth back to us out of its 

shroud 
Clearly as under yon thunder-cloud 
I see that white sea-gull. It grew and 

grew, 
From the pine-trees gathering a sombre 

hue, 
Till it seems a mere murmur out of the 

vast 
Norwegian forests of the past; 
And it grew itself like a true Northern 

pine, 
First a little slender line, 
Like a mermaid's green eyelash, and then 

anon 
A stem that a tower might rest upon, 
Standing spear-straight in the waist-deep 

moss, 
Its bony roots clutching around and across, 
As if they would tear up earth's heart in 

their grasp 
Ere the storm should uproot them or make 

them unclasp; 
Its cloudy boughs singing, as suiteth the 

pine, 
To snow-bearded sea-kings old songs of the 

brine, 
Till they straightened and let their staves 

fall to the floor, 
Hearing waves moan again on the perilous 

shore 
Of Vinland, perhaps, while their prow 

groped its way 
'Twixt the frothed gnashing tusks of some 
ship-crunching bay. 



So. 



strong- 



pine-like, the legend grew 3 
limbed and tall, 

As the Gypsy child grows that eats crusts 
in the hall; 

It sucked the whole strength of the earth 
and the sky, 

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, all brought 
it supply; 

'T was a natural growth, and stood fear- 
lessly there, 



True part of the landscape as sea, land, and 

air; 
For it grew in good times, ere the fashion 

it was 
To force these wild births of the woods 

under glass, 
And so, if 't is told as it should be told, 
Though 't were sung under Venice's moon- 
light of gold, 
You would hear the old voice of its mother, 

the pine, 
Murmur sealike and northern through 

every line, 
And the verses should grow, self-sustained 

and free, 
Round the vibrating stem of the melody, 
Like the lithe moonlit limbs of the parent 

tree. 

Yes, the pine is the mother of legends; 

what food 
For their grim roots is left when the thou- 

sand-yeared wood, 
The dim-aisled cathedral, whose tall arches 

spring- 
Light, sinewy, graceful, firm-set as the 

wing 
From Michael's white shoulder, is hewn and 

defaced 
By iconoclast axes in desperate waste, 
And its wrecks seek the ocean it prophesied 

long, 
Cassandra-like, crooning its mystical song ? 
Then the legends go with them, — even yet 

on the sea 
A wild virtue is left in the touch of the tree, 
And the sailor's night-watches are thrilled 

to the core 
With the lineal offspring of Odin and Thor. 

Yes, wherever the pine-wood has never let 
in, 

Since the day of creation, the light and the 
din 

Of manifold life, but has safely conveyed 

From the midnight primeval its armful of 
shade, 

And has kept the weird Past with its child- 
faith alive 

Mid the hum and the stir of To-day's busy 
hive, 

There the legend takes root in the age- 
gathered gloom, 

And its murmurous boughs for their sag 
find room. 



EXTREME UNCTION 



75 



Where Aroostook, far-heard, seems to sob 
as he goes 

Groping down to the sea 'neath his moun- 
tainous snows; 

Where the lake's frore Sahara of never- 
tracked white, 

When the crack shoots across it, complains 
to the night 

With a long, lonely moan, that leagues 
northward is lost, 

As the ice shrinks away from the tread of 
the frost; 

Where the lumberers sit by the log-fires 
that throw 

Their own threatening shadows far round 
o'er the snow, 

When the wolf howls aloof, and the waver- 
ing glare 

Flashes out from the blackness the eyes of 
the bear, 

When the wood's huge recesses, half- 
lighted, supply 

A canvas where Fancy her mad brush may 
try, 

Blotting in giant Horrors that venture not 
down 

Through the right-angled streets of the 
brisk, whitewashed town, 

But skulk in the depths of the measureless 
wood 

Mid the Dark's creeping whispers that 
curdle the blood, 

When the eye, glanced in dread o'er the 
shoulder, may dream, 

Ere it shrinks to the camp-fire's companion- 
ing gleam, 

That it saw the fierce ghost of the Red 
Man crouch back 

To the shroud of the tree-trunk's invincible 
black; 

There the old shapes crowd thick round 
the pine-shadowed camp, 

Which shun the keen gleam of the scholarly 
lamp, 

And the seed of the legend finds true Nor- 
land ground, 

While the border-tale's told and the can- 
teen flits round. 



A CONTRAST 

Thy love thou sentest oft to me, 

And still as oft I thrust it back; 
Thy messengers I could not see 



In those who everything did lack, 
The poor, the outcast and the black. 

Pride held his hand before mine eyes, 
The world with flattery stuffed mine ears ; 

I looked to see a monarch's guise, 

Nor dreamed thy love would knock for 

years, 
Poor, naked, fettered, full of tears. 

Yet, when I sent my love to thee, 
Thou with a smile didst take it in, 

And entertain'dst it royally, 

Though grimed with earth, with hunger 

thin, 
And leprous with the taint of sin. 

Now every day thy love I meet, 
As o'er the earth it wanders wide, 

With weary step and bleeding feet, 
Still knocking at the heart of pride 
And offering grace, though still denied. 



EXTREME UNCTION 

Go ! leave me, Priest; my soul would be 

Alone with the consoler, Death; 
Far sadder eyes than thine will see 

This crumbling clay yield up its breath; 
These shrivelled hands have deeper stains 

Than holy oil can cleanse away, 
Hands that have plucked the world's coarse 
gains 

As erst they plucked the flowers of May. 

Call, if thou canst, to these gray eyes 

Some faith from youth's traditions 
wrung; 
This fruitless husk which dustward dries 

Hath been a heart once, hath been young; 
On this bowed head the awful Past 

Once laid its consecrating hands; 
The Future in its purpose vast 

Paused, waiting my supreme commands. 

But look ! whose shadows block the door ? 

Who are those two that stand aloof ? 
See ! on my hands this freshening gore 

Writes o'er again its crimson proof ! 
My looked-for death-bed guests are met; 

There my dead Youth doth wring its 
hands, 
And there, with eyes that goad me yet, 

The ghost of my Ideal stands ! 



7 6 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



God bends from out the deep and says, 

" I gave thee the great gift of life; 
Wast thou not called in many ways ? 

Are not my earth and heaven at strife ? 
I gave thee of my seed to sow, 

Bringest thou me my hundred-fold ? " 
Can I look up with face aglow, 

And answer, " Father, here is gold " ? 

I have been innocent; God knows 

When first this wasted life began, 
Not grape with grape more kindly grows, 

Than I with every brother-man : 
Now here I gasp ; what lose my kind, 

When this fast ebbing breath shall 
part? 
What bands of love and service bind 

This being to a brother heart ? 

Christ still was wandering o'er the earth 

Without a place to lay his head; 
He found free welcome at my hearth, 

He shared my cup and broke my bread: 
Now, when I hear those steps sublime, 

That bring the other world to this, 
My snake-turned nature, sunk in slime, 

Starts sideway with defiant hiss. 

Upon the hour when I was born, 

God said, "Another man shall be," 
And the great Maker did not scorn 

Out of himself to fashion me; 
He sunned me with his ripening looks, 

And Heaven's rich instincts in me grew, 
As effortless as woodland nooks 

Send violets up and paint them blue. 

Yes, I who now, with angry tears, 

Am exiled back to brutish clod, 
Have borne unquenched for fourscore years 

A spark of the eternal God; 
And to what end ? How yield I back 

The trust for such high uses given ? 
Heaven's light hath but revealed a track 

Whereby to crawl away from heaven. 

Men think it is an awful sight 

To see a soul just set adrift 
On that drear voyage from whose night 

The ominous shadows never lift; 
But 't is more awful to behold 

A helpless infant newly born, 
Whose little hands unconscious hold 

The keys of darkness and of morn. 



Mine held them once ; I flung away 

Those keys that might have open set 
The golden sluices of the day, 

But clutch the keys of darkness yet; 
I hear the reapers singing go 

Into God's harvest; I, that might 
With them have chosen, here below 

Grope shuddering at the gates of night. 

O glorious Youth, that once wast mine ! 

O high Ideal ! all in vain 
Ye enter at this ruined shrine 

Whence worship ne'er shall rise again; 
The bat and owl inhabit here, 

The snake nests in the altar-stone, 
The sacred vessels moulder near, 

The image of the God is gone. 



THE OAK 

What gnarled stretch, what depth of 
shade, is his ! 
There needs no crown to mark the for- 
est's king; 
How in his leaves outshines full summer's 
bliss ! 
Sun, storm, rain, dew, to him their trib- 
ute bring, 
Which he with such benignant royalty 
Accepts, as overpayeth what is lent; 
All nature seems his vassal proud to be, 
And cunning only for his ornament. 

How towers he, too, amid the billowed 
• snows, 
An unquelled exile from the summer's 
throne, 
Whose plain, uncinctured front more kingly 
shows, 
Now that the obscuring courtier leaves 
are flown. 
His boughs make music of the winter air, 
Jewelled with sleet, like some cathedral 
front 
Where clinging snow-flakes with quaint art 
repair 
The dints and furrows of time's envious 
brunt. 

How doth his patient strength the rude 
March wind 
Persuade to seem glad breaths of sum- 
mer breeze, 

And win the soil that fain would be unkind, 



AMBROSE 



77 



To swell his revenues with proud in- 
crease ! 
He is the gem; and all the landscape wide 

(So doth his grandeur isolate the sense) 
Seems but the setting, worthless all beside, 

An empty socket, were he fallen thence. 

So, from oft converse with life's wintry 
gales, 
Should man learn how to clasp with 
tougher roots 
The inspiring earth; how otherwise avails 
The leaf - creating sap that sunward 
shoots ? 
So every year that falls with noiseless 
flake 
Should fill old scars up on the storm- 
ward side, 
And make hoar age revered for age's sake, 
Not for traditions of youth's leafy pride. 

So, from the pinched soil of a churlish fate, 
True hearts compel the sap of sturdier 
growth, 
So between earth and heaven stand simply 
great, 
That these shall seem but their attend- 
ants both; 
For nature's forces with obedient zeal 

Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will ; 
As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel, 
And turn mad Pucks to flout and mock 
him still. 

Lord ! all thy works are lessons; each con- 
tains 
Some emblem of man's all-containing 
soul; 
Shall he make fruitless all thy glorious 
pains, 
Delving within thy grace an eyeless 
mole ? 
Make me the least of thy Dodona-grove, 
Cause me some message of thy truth to 
bring, 
Speak but a word through me, nor let thy 
love 
Among my boughs disdain to perch and 
sing. 



AMBROSE 

Never, surely, was holier man 

Than Ambrose, since the world began; 



With diet spare and raiment thin 

He shielded himself from the father of sin; 

With bed of iron and scourgings oft, 

His heart to God's hand as wax made soft. 

Through earnest prayer and watchings 

long 
He sought to know 'tween right and wrong, 
Much wrestling with the blessed Word 
To make it yield the sense of the Lord, 
That he might build a storm-proof creed 
To fold the flock in at their need. 

At last he builded a perfect faith, 

Fenced round about with The Lord thus 

saithj 
To himself he fitted the doorway's size, 
Meted the light to the need of his eyes, 
And knew, by a sure and inward sign, 
That the work of his fingers was divine. 

Then Ambrose said, " All those shall die 
The eternal death who believe not as I; " 
And some were boiled, some burned in fire, 
Some sawn in twain, that his heart's desire, 
For the good of men's souls might be satis- 
fied 
By the drawing of all to the righteous side. 

One day, as Ambrose was seeking the truth 
In his lonely walk, he saw a youth 
Resting himself in the shade of a tree; 
It had never been granted him to see 
So shining a face, and the good man 

thought 
'T were pity he should not believe as he 

ought. 

So he set himself by the young man's side, 
And the state of his soul with questions 

tried; 
But the heart of the stranger was hardened 

indeed, 
Nor received the stamp of the one true 

creed; 
And the spirit of Ambrose waxed sore to 

find 
Such features the porch of so narrow a 

mind. 

" As each beholds in cloud and fire 
The shape that answers his own desire, 
So each," said the youth, "in the Law shall 

find 
The figure and fashion of his mind; 



7 8 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



And to each in his mercy hath God allowed 
His several pillar of fire and cloud." 

The soul of Ambrose burned with zeal 
And holy wrath for the young man's weal: 
"Believest thou then, most wretched 

youth," 
Cried he, "a dividual essence in Truth ? 
I fear me thy heart is too cramped with sin 
To take the Lord in his glory in." 

Now there bubbled beside them where they 

stood 
A fountain of waters sweet and good; 
The youth to the streamlet's brink drew 

near 
Saying, "Ambrose, thou maker of creeds, 

look here ! " 
Six vases of crystal then he took, 
And set them along the edge of the brook. 

" As into these vessels the water I pour, 
There shall one hold less, another more, 
And the water unchanged, in every case, 
Shall put on the figure of the vase ; 
O thou, who wouldst unity make through 

strife, 
Canst thou fit this sign to the Water of 

Life?" 

When A mbrose looked up, he stood alone, 
The youth and the stream and the vases 

were gone; 
But he knew, by a sense of humbled grace, 
He had talked with an angel face to face, 
And felt his heart change inwardly, 
As he fell on his knees beneath the tree. 



ABOVE AND BELOW 



O dwellers in the valley-land, 

Who in deep twilight grope and cower, 
Till the slow mountain's dial-hand 

Shorten to noon's triumphal hour, 
While ye sit idle, do ye think 

The Lord's great work sits idle too ? 
That light dare not o'erleap the brink 

Of morn, because 't is dark with you ? 

Though yet your valleys skulk in night, 
In God's ripe fields the day is cried, 

And reapers, with their sickles bright, 
Troop, singing, down the mountain-side : 



Come up, and feel what health there is 
In the frank Dawn's delighted eyes, 

As, bending with a pitying kiss, 

The night-shed tears of Earth she dries ! 

The Lord wants reapers: oh, mount up, 

Before night comes, and says, "Too 
late ! " 
Stay not for taking scrip or cup, 

The Master hungers while ye wait; 
'T is from these heights alone your eyes 

The advancing spears of day can see, 
That o'er the eastern hill-tops rise, 

To break your long captivity. 



Lone watcher on the mountain-height, 

It is right precious to behold 
The first long surf of climbing light 

Flood all the thirsty east with gold; 
But we, who in the shadow sit, 

Know also when the day is nigh, 
Seeing thy shining forehead lit 

With his inspiring prophecy. 

Thou hast thine office ; we have ours ; 

God lacks not early service here, 
But what are thine eleventh hours 

He counts with us for morning cheer; 
Our day, for Him, is long enough, 

And when He giveth work to do, 
The bruised reed is amply tough 

To pierce the shield of error through. 

But not the less do thou aspire 

Light's earlier messages to preach; 
Keep back no syllable of fire, 

Plunge deep the rowels of thy speech. 
Yet God deems not thine aeried sight 

More worthy than our twilight dim; 
For meek Obedience, too, is Light, 

And following that is finding Him. 



THE CAPTIVE 

It was past the hour of trysting, 
But she lingered for him still ; 

Like a child, the eager streamlet 
Leaped and laughed adown the hill, 

Happy to be free at twilight 
From its toiling at the mill. 

Then the great moon on a sudden 
Ominous, and red as blood, 






THE BIRCH-TREE 



79 



. 



Startling as a new creation, 
O'er the eastern hilltop stood, 

Casting deep and deeper shadows 
Through the mystery of the wood. 

Dread closed vast and vague about her, 
And her thoughts turned fearfully 

To her heart, if there some shelter 
From the silence there might be, 

Like bare cedars leaning inland 
From the blighting of the sea. 

Yet he came not, and the stillness 
Dampened round her like a tomb; 

She could feel cold eyes of spirits 
Looking on her through the gloom, 

She could hear the groping footsteps 
Of some blind, gigantic doom. 

Suddenly the silence wavered 
Like a light mist in the wind, 

For a voice broke gently through it, 
Felt like sunshine by the blind, 

And the dread, like mist in sunshine, 
Furled serenely from her mind. 

" Once my love, my love forever, 
Flesh or spirit, still the same, 

If I failed at time of trysting, 

Deem thou not my faith to blame; 

I, alas, was made a captive, 
As from Holy Land I came. 

"On a green spot in the desert, 
Gleaming like an emerald star, 
Where a palm-tree, in lone silence, 

Yearning for its mate afar, 
Droops above a silver runnel, 
Slender as a scimitar, 

" There thou 'It find the humble postern 

To the castle of my foe; 
If thy love burn clear and faithful, 

Strike the gateway, green and low, 
Ask to enter, and the warder 

Surely will not say thee no." 

Slept again the aspen silence, 
But her loneliness was o'er; 

Round her soul a motherly patience 
Clasped its arms forevermore; 

From her heart ebbed back the sorrow, 
Leaving smooth the golden shore. 

Donned she now the pilgrim scallop, 
Took the Pilgrim staff in hand; 



Like a cloud-shade flitting eastward, 
Wandered she o'er sea and land; 

And her footsteps in the desert 
Fell like cool rain on the sand. 

Soon, beneath the palm-tree's shadow, 
Knelt she at the postern low; 

And thereat she knocked full gently, 
Fearing much the warder's no; 

All her heart stood still and listened, 
As the door swung backward slow. 

There she saw no surly warder 
With an eye like bolt and bar; 

Through her soul a sense of music 
Throbbed, and, like a guardian Lar, 

On the threshold stood an angel, 
Bright and silent as a star. 

Fairest seemed he of God's seraphs, 

And her spirit, lily-wise, 
Opened when he turned upon her 

The deep welcome of his eyes, 
Sending upward to that sunlight 

All its dew for sacrifice. 

Then she heard a voice come onward 
Singing with a rapture new, 

As Eve heard the songs in Eden, 
Dropping earthward with the dew; 

Well she knew the happy singer, 
Well the happy song she knew. 

Forward leaped she o'er the threshold, 

Eager as a glancing surf; 
Fell from her the spirit's languor, 

Fell from her the body's scurf; 
'Neath the palm next day some Arabs 

Found a corpse upon the turf. 



THE BIRCH-TREE 

Rippling through thy branches goes the 
sunshine, 

Among thy leaves that palpitate forever; 

Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had pris- 
oned, 

.The soul once of some tremulous inland 
river, 

Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah ! dumb, 
dumb forever ! 

While all the forest, witched with slum- 
berous moonshine, 



8o 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



Holds up its leaves in happy, happy still- 
ness, 

Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse 
suspended, 

I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands, 

And track thee wakeful still amid the 
wide-hung silence. 

On the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet, 
Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad, 
Dripping round thy slim white stem, whose 

shadow 
Slopes quivering down the water's dusky 

quiet, 
Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would 

some startled Naiad. 

Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers; 

Thy white bark has their secrets in its 
keeping; 

Reuben writes here the happy name of Pa- 
tience, 

And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and 
weeping 

Above her, as she steals the mystery from 
thy keeping. 

Thou art to me like my beloved maiden, 

So frankly coy, so full of trembly confi- 
dences ; 

Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pat- 
tering leaflets 

Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my 
senses, 

And Nature gives me all her summer con- 
fidences. 

Whether my heart with hope or sorrow 

tremble, 
Thou sympathizest still ; wild and unquiet, 
I fling me down ; thy ripple, like a river, 
Flows valleyward, where calmness is, and 

by it 
My heart is floated down into the land of 

quiet. 

AN INTERVIEW WITH MILES 
STANDISH 

I sat one evening in my room, 
In that sweet hour of twilight 

When blended thoughts, half light, half 
gloom, 
Throng through the spirit's skylight; 

The flames by fits curled round the bars, 



Or up the chimney crinkled, 
While embers dropped like falling stars, 
And in the ashes tinkled. 

I sat and mused; the fire burned low, 

And, o'er my senses stealing, 
Crept something of the ruddy glow 

That bloomed on wall and ceiling; 
My pictures (they are very few, 

The heads of ancient wise men) 
Smoothed down their knotted fronts, and 
grew 

As rosy as excisemen. 

My antique high-backed Spanish chair 

Felt thrills through wood and leather, 
That had been strangers since whilere, 

Mid Andalusian heather, 
The oak that built its sturdy frame 

His happy arms stretched over 
The ox whose fortunate hide became 

The bottom's polished cover. 



It came out in that famous bark, 

That brought our sires intrepid, 
Capacious as another ark 

For furniture decrepit; 
For, as that saved of bird and beast 

A pair for propagation, 
So has the seed of these increased 

And furnished half the nation. 



Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats; 

But those slant precipices 
Of ice the northern voyager meets 

Less slippery are than this is; 
To cling therein would pass the wit 

Of royal man or woman, 
And whatsoe'er can stay in it 

Is more or less than human. 

I offer to all bores this perch, 

Dear well-intentioned people 
With heads as void as week-day church, 

Tongues longer than the steeple; 
To folks with missions, whose gaunt eyes 

See golden ages rising, — 
Salt of the earth ! in what queer Guys 

Thou 'rt fond of crystallizing ! 

My wonder, then, was not unmixed 

With merciful suggestion, 
When, as my roving eyes grew fixed 

Upon the chair in question, 
I saw its trembling arms enclose 






AN INTERVIEW WITH MILES STANDISH 



81 



A figure grim and rusty, 
Whose doublet plain and plainer hose 
Were something worn and dusty. 

Now even such men as Nature forms 

Merely to fill the street with, 
Once turned to ghosts by hungry worms, 

Are serious things to meet with; 
Your penitent spirits are no jokes, 

And, though I 'm not averse to 
A quiet shade, even they are folks 

One cares not to speak first to. 

Who knows, thought I, but he has come, 

By Charon kindly ferried, 
To tell me of a mighty sum 

Behind my wainscot buried ? 
There is a buccaneerish air 

About that garb outlandish — 
Just then the ghost drew up his chair 

And said, " My name is Standish. 

" I come from Plymouth, deadly bored 

With toasts, and songs, and speeches, 
As long and flat as my old sword, 

As threadbare as my breeches: 
They understand us Pilgrims ! they, 

Smooth men with rosy faces, 
Strength's knots andgnarls all pared away, 

And varnish in their places ! 

" We had some toughness in our grain, 

The eye to rightly see us is 
Not just the one that lights the brain 

Of drawing-room Tyrtseuses: 
They talk about their Pilgrim blood, 

Their birthright high and holy ! 
A mountain-stream that ends in mud 

Methinks is melancholy. 

" He had stiff knees, the Puritan, 

That were not good at bending; 
The homespun dignity of man 

He thought was worth defending; 
He did not, with his pinchbeck ore, 

His country's shame forgotten, 
Gild Freedom's coffin o'er and o'er, 

When all within was rotten. 

" These loud ancestral boasts of yours, 
How can they else than vex us ? 

Where were your dinner orators 
When slavery grasped at Texas ? 

Dumb on his knees was every one 
That now is bold as Csesar; 



Mere pegs to hang an office on 
Such stalwart men as these are." 

" Good sir," I said, " you seem much 
stirred; 
The sacred compromises " — 
" Now God confound the dastard word ! 

My gall thereat arises : 
Northward it hath this sense alone, 
. That you, your conscience blinding, 
Shall bow your fool's nose to the stone, 
When slavery feels like grinding. 

" 'T is shame to see such painted sticks 

In Yane's and Winthrop's places, 
To see your spirit of Seventy-six 

Drag humbly in the traces, 
With slavery's lash upon her back, 

And herds of office-holders 
To shout applause, as, with a crack, 

It peels her patient shoulders. 

" We forefathers to such a rout ! — 

No, by my faith in God's word ! " 
Half rose the ghost, and half drew out 

The ghost of his old broadsword, 
Then thrust it slowly back again, 

And said, with reverent gesture, 
"No, Freedom, no! blood should not stain 

The hem of thy white vesture. 

" I feel the soul in me draw near 

The mount of prophesying; 
In this bleak wilderness I hear 

A John the Baptist crying; 
Far in the east I see upleap 

The streaks of first forewarning, 
And they who sowed the light shall reap 

The golden sheaves of morning. 

" Child of our travail and our woe, 

Light in our day of sorrow, 
Through my rapt spirit I foreknow 

The glory of thy morrow; 
I hear great steps, that through the shade 

Draw nigher still and nigher, 
And voices call like that which bade 

The prophet come up higher." 

I looked, no form mine eyes could find, 

I heard the red cock crowing, 
And through my window-chinks the wind 

A dismal tune was blowing; 
Thought I, My neighbor Buckingham 

Hath somewhat in him gritty, 



82 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



Some Pilgrim-stuff that hates all sham, 
And he will print my ditty. 

ON THE CAPTURE OF FUGITIVE 
SLAVES NEAR WASHINGTON 

In a letter to Edward M. Davis written from 
Elmwood July 24, 1845, Lowell says : " I blew 
another ' dolorous and jarring blast ' in the 
Courier the other day, which you will proba- 
bly see in the Liberator of this week or next. 
I was impelled to write by the account of the 
poor fugitives who were taken near Washing- 
ton. I think it has done some good. At any 
rate, it has set two gentlemen together by the 
ears about Dissolution, and they are hammer- 
ing away at each other in the Courier." The 
blast was the following stanzas. 

Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they 
who can, 

The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that 
make man truly man; 

Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up 
with interest or with ease 

Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loath- 
some deeds like these ! 

I first drew in New England's air, and 
from her hardy breast 

Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will 
not let me rest; 

And if my words seem treason to the dul- 
lard and the tame, 

'T is but my Bay-State dialect, — our 
fathers spake the same ! 

Shame on the costly mockery of piling 
stone on stone 

To those who won our liberty, the heroes 
dead and gone, 

While we look coldly on and see law- 
shielded ruffians slay 

The men who fain would win their own, 
the heroes of to-day ! 

Are we pledged to craven silence ? Oh, 
fling it to the wind, 

The parchment wall that bars us from the 
least of human kind, 

That makes us cringe and temporize, and 
dumbly stand at rest, 

While Pity's burning flood of words is red- 
hot in the breast ! 



Though we break our fathers' promise, we 

have nobler duties first; 
The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most 

accursed ; 
Man is more than Constitutions; better rot 

beneath the sod, 
Than be true to Church and State while we 

are doubly false to God ! 

We owe allegiance to the State ; but deeper, 

truer, more, 
To the sympathies that God hath set within 

our spirit's core; 
Our country claims our fealty; we grant it 

so, but then 
Before Man made us citizens, great Nature 

made us men. 

He 's true to God who 's true to man ; 

wherever wrong is done, 
To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath 

the all-beholding sun, 
That wrong is also done to us; and they 

are slaves most base, 
Whose love of right is for themselves, and 

not for all their race. 

God works for all. Ye cannot hem the 
hope of being free 

With parallels of latitude, with mountain- 
range or sea. 

Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be 
callous as ye will, 

From soul to soul, o'er all the world, leaps 
one electric thrill. 

Chain down your slaves with ignorance, ye 

cannot keep apart, 
With all your craft of tyranny, the human 

heart from heart: 
When first the Pilgrims landed on the Bay 

State's iron shore, 
The word went forth that slavery should 

one day be no more. 

Out from the land of bondage 't is decreed 
our slaves shall go, 

And signs to us are offered, as erst to Pha- 
raoh ; 

If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel's 
of yore, 

Through a Red Sea is doomed to be, whose 
surges are of gore. 



THE GHOST-SEER 



83 



'T is ours to save our brethren, with peace 

and love to win 
Their darkened hearts from error, ere they 

harden it to sin; 
But if before his duty man with listless 

spirit stands, 
Erelong the Great Avenger takes the work 

from out his hands. 



TO THE DANDELION 

Dear common flower, that grow'st be- 
side the way, 
Fringing the dusty road with harmless 
gold, 
First pledge of blithesome May, 
Which children pluck, and, full of pride 
uphold, 
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that 
they 
An Eldorado in the grass have found, 

Which not the rich earth's ample 
round 
May match in wealth, thou art more dear 

to me 
Than all the prouder summer-blooms 
may be. 

Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Span- 
ish prow 
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, 

Nor wrinkled the lean brow 
Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease ; 
'T is the Spring's largess, which she scat- 
ters now 
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, 
Though most hearts never understand 
To take it at God's value, but pass by 
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye. 

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; 
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime ; 

The eyes thou givest me 
Are in the heart, and heed not space or 
time: 
Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed 
bee 
Feels a more summer-like warm ravish- 
ment 
In the white lily's breezy tent, 
His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first 
From the dark green thy yellow circles 
burst. 



Then think I of deep shadows on the 



Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, 

Where, as the breezes pass, 
The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, 
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, 
Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue 

That from the distance sparkle through 
Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, 
Where one white cloud like a stray lamb 
doth move. 

My childhood's earliest thoughts are 
linked with thee; 
The sight of thee calls back the robin's 
song, 
Who, from the dark old tree 
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, 

And I, secure in childish piety, 
Listened as if I heard an angel sing 

With news from heaven, which he 
could bring 
Fresh every day to my untainted ears 
When birds and flowers and I were 
happy peers. 

How like a prodigal doth nature seem, 
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! 

Thou teachest me to deem 
More sacredly of every human heart, 

Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam 
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret 
show, 
Did we but pay the love we owe, 
And with a child's undoubting wisdom 

look 
On all these living pages of God's book. 

THE GHOST-SEER 

This poem was printed March 8, 1845, in the 
Broadway Journal, edited by C. F. Brings. 
In a letter accompanying the poem Lowell 
confesses his dissatisfaction with the execution 
as compared with the conception, and adds : 
" Written in the metre which I have chosen it 
is perhaps too long-, but the plot would have 
sufficed for quite a long and elaborate poem, 
into which a good deal of reflection and ex- 
perience might have been compressed." 

Ye who, passing graves by night, 
Glance not to the left or right, 
Lest a spirit should arise, 
Cold and white, to freeze your eyes, 



84 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



Some weak phantom, which your doubt 


'Gainst the girl whose fingers thin 


Shapes upon the dark without 


Wove the weary broidery in, 


From the dark within, a guess 


Bending backward from her toil, 


At the spirit's deathlessness, 


Lest her tears the silk might soil, 


Which ye entertain with fear 


And, in midnights chill and murk, 


In your self -built dungeon here, 


Stitched her life into the work, 


Where ye sell your God-given lives 


Shaping from her bitter thought 


Just for gold to buy you gyves, — 


Heart's-ease and forget-me-not, 


Ye without a shudder meet 


Satirizing her despair 


In the city's noonday street, 


With the emblems woven there. 


Spirits sadder and more dread 


Little doth the wearer heed 


Than from out the clay have fled, 


Of the heart-break in the brede; 


Buried, beyond hope of light, 


A hyena by her side 


In the body's haunted night ! 


Skulks, down-looking, — it is Pride. 


See ye not that woman pale ? 


He digs for her in the earth, 


There are bloodhounds on her trail ! 


Where lie all her claims of birth, 


Bloodhounds two, all gaunt and lean, 


With his foul paws rooting o'er 


(For the soul their scent is keen,) 


Some long-buried ancestor, 


Want and Sin, and Sin is last, 


Who perhaps a statue won 


They have followed far and fast; 


By the ill deeds he had done, 


Want gave tongue, and, at her howl, 


By the innocent blood he shed, 


Sin awakened with a growl. 


By the desolation spread 


Ah, poor girl ! she had a right 


Over happy villages, 


To a blessing from the light; 


Blotting out the smile of peace. 


Title-deeds to sky and earth 


There walks Judas, he who sold 


God gave to her at her birth; 


Yesterday his Lord for gold, 


But, before they were enjoyed, 


Sold God's presence in his heart 


Poverty had made them void, 


For a proud step in the mart; 


And had drunk the sunshine up 


He hath dealt in flesh and blood; 


From all nature's ample cup, 


At the bank his name is good; 


Leaving her a first-born's share 


At the bank, and only there, 


In the dregs of darkness there. 


'T is a marketable ware. 


Often, on the sidewalk bleak, 


In his eyes that stealthy gleam 


Hungry, all alone, and weak, 


Was not learned of sky or stream, 


She has seen, in night and storm, 


But it has the cold, hard glint 


Rooms o'erflow with firelight warm, 


Of new dollars from the mint. 


Which, outside the window-glass, 


Open now your spirit's eyes, 


Doubled all the cold, alas ! 


Look through that poor clay disguise 


Till each ray that on her fell 


Which has thickened, day by day, 


Stabbed her like an icicle, 


Till it keeps all light at bay, 


And she almost loved the wail 


And his soul in pitchy gloom 


Of the bloodhounds on her trail. 


Gropes about its narrow tomb, 


Till the floor becomes her bier, 


From whose dank and slimy walls 


She shall feel their pantings near, 


Drop by drop the horror falls. 


Close upon her very heels, 


Look ! a serpent lank and cold 


Spite of all the din of wheels; 


Hugs his spirit fold on fold; 


Shivering on her pallet poor, 


From his heart, all day and night, 


She shall hear them at the door 


It doth suck God's blessed light. 


Whine and scratch to be let in, 


Drink it will, and drink it must, 


Sister bloodhounds, Want and Sin ! 


Till the cup holds naught but dust; 




All day long he hears it hiss, 


Hark ! that rustle of a dress, 


Writhing in its fiendish bliss; 


Stiff with lavish costliness ! 


All night long he sees its eyes 


Here comes one whose cheek would flush 


Flicker with foul ecstasies, 


But to have her garment brush 


As the spirit ebbs away 



STUDIES FOR TWO HEADS 



85 



Into the absorbing clay. 

Who is he that skulks, afraid 

Of the trust he has betrayed, 

Shuddering if perchance a gleam 

Of old nobleness should stream 

Through the pent, unwholesome room, 

Where his shrunk soul cowers in gloom, 

Spirit sad beyond the rest 

By more instinct for the best ? 

'T is a poet who was sent 

For a bad world's punishment, 

By compelling it to see 

Golden glimpses of To Be, 

By compelling it to hear 

Songs that prove the angels near; 

Who was sent to be the tongue 

Of the weak and spirit-wrung, 

Whence the fiery-winged Despair 

In men's shrinking eyes might flare. 

'T is our hope doth fashion us 

To base use or glorious: 

He who might have been a lark 

Of Truth's morning, from the dark 

Raining down melodious hope 

Of a freer, broader scope, 

Aspirations, prophecies, 

Of the spirit's full sunrise, 

Chose to be a bird of night, 

That, with eyes refusing light, 

Hooted from some hollow tree 

Of the world's idolatry. 

'T is his punishment to hear 

Sweep of eager pinions near, 

And his own vain wings to feel 

Drooping downward to his heel, 

All their grace and import lost, 

Burdening his weary ghost: 

Ever walking by his side 

He must see his angel guide, 

Who at intervals doth turn 

Looks on him so sadly stern, 

With such ever-new surprise 

Of hushed anguish in her eyes, 

That it seems the light of day 

From around him shrinks away, 

Or drops blunted from the wall 

Built around him by his fall. 

Then the mountains, whose white peaks 

Catch the morning's earliest streaks, 

lie must see, where prophets sit, 

Turning east their faces lit, 

Whence, with footsteps beautiful, 

To the earth, yet dim and dull, 

They the gladsome tidings bring 

Of the sunlight's hastening: 



Never can these hills of bliss 
Be o'erelimbed by feet like his ! 

But enough ! Oh, do not dare 
From the next the veil to tear, 
Woven of station, trade, or dress, 
More obscene than nakedness, 
Wherewith plausible culture drapes 
Fallen Nature's myriad shapes ! 
Let us rather love to mark 
How the unextinguished spark 
Still gleams through the thin disguise 
Of our customs, pomps, and lies, 
And, not seldom blown to flame, 
Vindicates its ancient claim. 



STUDIES FOR TWO HEADS 

The second of these studies was from A. 
Bronson Alcott. See Letters II. 349, where 
Lowell has something to say of the ease with 
which he wrote at the time of this poem, i. e. 
before 1850. He was under an engagement 
at this time to write constantly for the Anti- 
Slavery Standard, and he threw off many 
poems as part of the fulfilment of his engage- 
ment. The spur to activity came when his 
own mind was fertile, and some of his best 
known and most spontaneous work appeared 
at this time. 



Some sort of heart I know is hers, — 
I chanced to feel her pulse one night; 

A brain she has that never errs, 
And yet is never nobly right; 

It does not leap to great results, 
But, in some corner out of sight, 
Suspects a spot of latent blight, 
And, o'er the impatient infinite, 

She bargains, haggles, and consults. 

Her eye, — it seems a chemic test 

And drops upon you like an acid; 
It bites you with unconscious zest, 

So clear and bright, so coldly placid; 
It holds you quietly aloof, 

It holds, — and yet it does not win you; 
It merely puts you to the proof 

And sorts what qualities are in you; 
It smiles, but never briugs you nearer, 

It lights, — her nature draws not nigh; 
'T is but that yours is growing clearer 

To her assays ; — yes, try and try, 

You '11 get no deeper than her eye. 



86 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



There, you are classified : she 's gone 

Far, far away into herself; 
Each with its Latin label on, 
Your poor components, one by one, 

Are laid upon their proper shelf 
In her compact and ordered mind, 
And what of you is left behind 
Is no more to her than the wind; 
In that clear brain, which, day and night, 

No movement of the heart e'er jostles, 
Her friends are ranged on left and right, — 
Here, silex, hornblende, sienite; 

There, animal remains and fossils. 

And yet, O subtile analyst, 

That canst each property detect 

Of mood or grain, that canst untwist 
Each tangled skein of intellect, 

And with thy scalpel eyes lay bare 

Each mental nerve more fine than air, — 
O brain exact, that in thy scales 

Canst weigh the sun and never err, 
For once thy patient science fails, 
One problem still defies thy art; — 

Thou never canst compute for her 

The distance and diameter 
Of any simple human heart. 



Hear him but speak, and you will feel 
The shadows of the Portico 

Over your tranquil spirit steal, 
To modulate all joy and woe 
To one subdued, subduing glow; 

Above our squabbling business-hours, 

Like Phidian Jove's, his beauty lowers, 

His nature satirizes ours; 

A form and front of Attic grace, 

He shames the higgling market-place, 

And dwarfs our more mechanic powers. 

What throbbing verse can fitly render 
That face so pure, so trembling-tender? 

Sensation glimmers through its rest, 
It speaks unmanacled by words, 

As full of motion as a nest 
That palpitates with unfledged birds; 

'T is likest to Bethesda's stream, 
Forewarned through all its thrilling springs, 

White with the angel's coming gleam, 
And rippled with his fanning wings. 

Hear him unfold his plots and plans, 
And larger destinies seem man's ; 
You conjure from his glowing face 



The omen of a fairer race ; 

With one grand trope he boldly spans 

The gulf wherein so many fall, 

'Twixt possible and actual; 
His first swift word, talaria-shod, 
Exuberant with conscious God, 
Out of the choir of planets blots 
The present earth with all its spots. 

Himself unshaken as the sky, 

His words, like whirlwinds, spin on high 

Systems and creeds pellmell together; 
'T is strange as to a deaf man's eye, 
While trees uprooted splinter by, 

The dumb turmoil of stormy weather; 

Less of iconoclast than shaper, 
His spirit, safe behind the reach 
Of the tornado of his speech, 

Burns calmly as a glowworm's taper. 

So great in speech, but, ah ! in act 

So overrun with vermin troubles, 
The coarse, sharp-cornered, ugly fact 

Of life collapses all his bubbles: 
Had he but lived in Plato's day, 

He might, unless my fancy errs, 
Have shared that golden voice's sway 

O'er barefooted philosophers. 
Our nipping climate hardly suits 
The ripening of ideal fruits: 
His theories vanquish us all summer, 
But winter makes him dumb and dumber; 
To see him mid life's needful things 

Is something painfully bewildering; 
He seems an angel with dipt wings 

Tied to a mortal wife and children, 
And by a brother seraph taken 
In the act of eating eggs and bacon. 
Like a clear fountain, his desire 

Exults and leaps toward the light, 
In every drop it says " Aspire ! " 

Striving for more ideal height; 
And as the fountain, falling thence, 

Crawls baffled through the common gut- 
ter, 
So, from his speech's eminence, 
He shrinks into the present tense, 

Unkinged by foolish bread and butter. 

Yet smile not, worldling, for in deeds 
Not all of life that 's brave and wise is; 

He strews an ampler future's seeds, 
'T is your fault if no harvest rises; 

Smooth back the sneer; for is it naught 
That all he is and has is Beauty's ? 



ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND'S CHILD 



87 



By soul the soul's gains must be wrought, 
The Actual claims our coarser thought, 
The Ideal hath its higher duties. 



ON A PORTRAIT OF DANTE 
BY GIOTTO 

Can this be thou who, lean and pale, 

With such immitigable eye 
Didst look upon those writhing souls in 
bale, 

And note each vengeance, and pass by 
Unmoved, save when thy heart by chance 
Cast backward one forbidden glance, 

And saw Francesca, with child's glee, 

Subdue and mount thy wild-horse knee 
And with proud hands control its fiery 
prance ? 

With half- drooped lids, and smooth, round 
brow, 

And eye remote, that inly sees 
Fair Beatrice's spirit wandering now 

In some sea-lulled Hesperides, 
Thou movest through the jarring street, 
Secluded from the noise of feet 

By her gift-blossom in thy hand, 

Thy branch of palm from Holy Land; — 
No trace is here of ruin's fiery sleet. 

Yet there is something round thy lips 
That prophesies the coming doom, 

The soft, gray herald-shadow ere the 
eclipse 
Notches the perfect disk with gloom; 

A something that would banish thee, 

And thine untamed pursuer be, 

From men and their unworthy fates, 
Though Florence had not shut her gates, 

And Grief had loosed her clutch and let 
thee free. 

Ah ! he who follows fearlessly 

The beckonings of a poet-heart 
Shall wander, and without the world's de- 
cree, 
A banished man in field and mart; 
Harder than Florence' walls the bar 
Which with deaf sternness holds him far 
From home and friends, till death's re- 
lease, 
And makes his only prayer for peace, 
Like thine, scarred veteran of a lifelong 
war ! 



ON THE DEATH OF A 
FRIEND'S CHILD 

This poem was printed in the Democratic 
Review, October, 1844, and the friend was 
doubtless C. F. Briggs. See the letter of con- 
solation addressed to him in August, Letters I. 
78-81. 

Death never came so nigh to me before, 
Nor showed me his mild face: oft had I 

mused 
Of calm and peace and safe forgetfulness, 
Of folded hands, closed eyes, and heart at 

rest, 
And slumber sound beneath a flowery turf, 
Of faults forgotten, and an inner place 
Kept sacred for us in the heart of friends ; 
But these were idle fancies, satisfied 
With the mere husk of this great mystery, 
And dwelling in the outward shows of 

things. 
Heaven is not mounted to on wings of 

dreams, 
Nor doth the unthankful happiness of 

youth 
Aim thitherward, but floats from bloom to 

bloom, 
With earth's warm patch of sunshine well 

content: 
'T is sorrow builds the shining ladder up, 
Whose golden rounds are our calamities, 
Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer 

God 
The , spirit climbs, and hath its eyes un- 
sealed. 

True is it that Death's face seems stern 

and cold, 
When he is sent to summon those we love, 
But all God's angels come to us disguised; 
Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, 
One after other lift their frowning masks, 
And we behold the seraph's face beneath, 
All radiant with the glory and the calm 
Of having looked upon the front of God. 
With every anguish of our earthly part 
The spirit's sight grows clearer; this was 

meant 
When Jesus touched the blind man's lids 

with clay. 
Life is the jailer, Death the angel sent 
To draw the unwilling bolts and set us free. 
He flings not ope the ivory gate of Rest, — 
Only the fallen spirit knocks at that, — 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



But to benigner regions beckons us, 

To destinies of more rewarded toil. 

In the hushed chamber, sitting by the dead, 

It grates on us to hear the flood of life 

Whirl rustling onward, senseless of our 

loss. 
The bee hums on; around the blossomed 

vine 
Whirs the light humming-bird; the cricket 

chirps; 
The locust's shrill alarum stings the ear; 
Hard by, the cock shouts lustily; from 

farm to farm, 
His cheery brothers, telling of the sun, 
Answer, till far away the joyance dies: 
We never knew before how God had tilled 
The summer air with happy living sounds ; 
All round us seems an overplus of life, 
And yet the one dear heart lies cold and 

still. 
It is most strange, when the great miracle 
Hath for our sakes been done, when we 

have had 
Our inwardest experience of God, 
When with his presence still the room ex- 
pands, 
And is awed after him, that naught is 

changed, 
That Nature's face looks unacknowledging, 
And the mad world still dances heedless on 
After its butterflies, and gives no sign. 
'T is hard at first to see it all aright: 
In vain Faith blows her trump to summon 

back 
Her scattered troop: yet, through the 

clouded glass 
Of our own bitter tears, we learn to look 
Undazzled on the kindness of God's face; 
Earth is too dark, and Heaven alone shines 

through. 

It is no little thing, when a fresh soul 
And a fresh heart, with their unmeasured 

scope 
For good, not gravitating earthward yet, 
But circling in diviner periods, 
Are sent into the world, — no little thing, 
When this unbounded possibility 
Into the outer silence is withdrawn. 
Ah, in this world, where every guiding 

thread 
Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, 

death, 
The visionary hand of Might-have-been 
Alone can fill Desire's cup to the brim ! 



How changed, dear friend, are thy part and 

thy child's ! 
He bends above thy cradle now, or holds 
His warning finger out to be thy guide; 
Thou art the nursling now; he watches 

thee 
Slow learning, one by one, the secret things 
Which are to him used sights of everyday; 
He smiles to see thy wondering glances 

con 
The grass and pebbles of the spirit-world, 
To thee miraculous; and he will teach 
Thy knees their due observances of prayer. 
Children are God's apostles, day by day 
Sent forth to preach of love, and hope, and 

peace ; 
Nor hath thy babe his mission left undone. 
To me, at least, his going hence hath given 
Serener thoughts and nearer to the skies, 
And opened a new fountain in my heart 
For thee, my friend, and all: and oh, if 

Death 
More near approaches meditates, and clasps 
Even now some dearer, more reluctant 

hand, 
God, strengthen thou my faith, that I may 

see 
That 't is thine angel, who, with loving 

haste, 
Unto the service of the inner shrine, 
Doth waken thy beloved with a kiss. 



EURYDICE 

Heaven's cup held down to me I drain, 
The sunshine mounts and spurs my brain; 
Bathing in grass, with thirsty eye 
I suck the last drop of the sky; 
With each hot sense I draw to the lees 
The quickening out-door influences, 
And empty to each radiant comer 
A supernaculum of summer: 
Not, Bacchus, all thy grosser juice 
Could bring enchantment so profuse, 
Though for its press each grape-bunch had 
The white feet of an Oread. 

Through our coarse art gleam, now and 

then, 
The features of angelic men: 
'Neath the lewd Satyr's veiling paint 
Glows forth the Sibyl, Muse, or Saint; 
The dauber's botch no more obscures 
The mighty master's portraitures. 



THE CHANGELING 



And who can say what luckier beam 
The hidden glory shall redeem, 
For what chance clod the soul may wait 
To stumble on its nobler fate, 
Or why, to his unwarned abode, 
Still by surprises comes the God ? 
Some moment, nailed on sorrow's cross, 
May meditate a whole youth's loss, 
Some windfall joy, we know not whence, 
Redeem a lifetime's rash expense, 
And, suddenly wise, the soul may mark, 
Stripped of their simulated dark, 
Mountains of gold that pierce the sky, 
Girdling its valleyed poverty. 

I feel ye, childhood's hopes, return, 
With olden heats my pulses burn, — 
Mine be the self-forgetting sweep, 
The torrent impulse swift and wild, 
Wherewith Taghkanic's rockborn child 
Dares gloriously the dangerous leap, 
And, in his sky-descended mood, 
Transmutes each drop of sluggish blood, 
By touch of bravery's simple wand, 
To amethyst and diamond, 
Proving himself no bastard slip, 
But the true granite-cradled one, 
Nursed with the rock's primeval drip, 
The cloud-embracing mountain's son ! 

Prayer breathed in vain ! no wish's sway 

Rebuilds the vanished yesterday; 

For plated wares of Sheffield stamp 

We gave the old Aladdin's lamp; 

'T is we are changed; ah, whither went 

That undesigned abandonment, 

That wise, unquestioning content, 

Which could erect its microcosm 

Out of a weed's neglected blossom, 

Could call up Arthur and his peers 

By a low moss's clump of spears, 

Or, in its shingle trireme launched, 

Where Charles in some green inlet 

branched, 
Could venture for the golden fleece 
And dragon-watched Hesperides, 
Or, from its ripple-shattered fate, 
Ulysses' chances re-create ? 
When, heralding life's every phase, 
There glowed a goddess-veiling haze, 
A plenteous, forewarning grace, 
Like that more tender dawn that flies 
Before the full moon's ample rise ? 
Methinks thy parting glory shines 
Through yonder grove of singing pines; 



At that elm-vista's end I trace 
Dimly thy sad leave-taking face, 
Eurydice ! Eurydice ! 
The tremulous leaves repeat to me 
Eurydice ! Eurydice ! 
No gloomier Orcus swallows thee 
Than the unclouded sunset's glow; 
Thine is at least Elysian woe ; 
Thou hast Good's natural decay, 
And fadest like a star away 
Into an atmosphere whose shine 
With fuller day o'ermasters thine, 
Entering defeat as 't were a shrine; 
For us, — we turn life's diary o'er 
To find but one word, — Nevermore. 



SHE CAME AND WENT 

As a twig trembles, which a bird 

Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent, 

So is my memory thrilled and stirred; — 
I only know she came and went. 

As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven, 
The blue dome's measureless content, 

So my soul held that moment's heaven; — 
I only know she came and went. 

As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps 
The orchards full of bloom and scent, 

So clove her May my wintry sleeps ; — 
I only know she came and went. 

An angel stood and met my gaze, 

Through the low doorway of my tent; 

The tent is struck, the vision stays ; — 
I only know she came and went. 

Oh, when the room grows slowly dim, 
And life's last oil is nearly spent, 

One gush of light these eyes will brim, 
Only to think she came and went. 



THE CHANGELING 

I had a little daughter, 

And she was given to me 
To lead me gently backward 

To the Heavenly Father's knee, 
That I, by the force of nature, 

Might in some dim wise divine 
The depth of his infinite patience 

To this wayward soul of mine. 



9° 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



I know not how others saw her, 

But to me she was wholly fair, 
And the light of the heaven she came from 

Still lingered and gleamed in her hair; 
For it was as wavy and golden, 

And as many changes took, 
As the shadows of sun-gilt ripples 

On the yellow bed of a brook. 

To what can I liken her smiling 

Upon me, her kneeling lover, 
How it leaped from her lips to her eye- 
lids, 

And dimpled her wholly over, 
Till her outstretched hands smiled also, 

And I almost seemed to see 
The very heart of her mother 

Sending sun through her veins to me ! 

She had been with us scarce a twelve- 
month, 

And it hardly seemed a day, 
"When a troop of wandering angels 

Stole my little daughter away ; 
Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari 

But loosed the hampering strings, 
And when they had opened her cage-door, 

My little bird used her wings. 

But they left in her stead a changeling, 

A little angel child, 
That seems like her bud in full blossom, 

And smiles as she never smiled: 
When I wake in the morning, I see it 

Where she always used to lie, 
And I feel as weak as a violet 

Alone 'neath the awful sky. 

As weak, yet as trustful also; 

For the whole year long I see 
All the wonders of faithful Nature 

Still worked for the love of me; 
Winds wander, and dews drip earthward, 

Bain falls, suns rise and set, 
Earth whirls, and all but to prosper 

A poor little violet. 

This child is not mine as the first was, 

I cannot sing it to rest, 
I cannot lift it up fatherly 

And bliss it upon my breast: 
Yet it lies in my little one's cradle 

And sits in my little one's chair, 
And the light of the heaven she 's gone to 

Transfigures its golden hair. 



THE PIONEER 

What man would live coffined with 
brick and stone, 
Imprisoned from the healing touch of 

air, 
And cramped with selfish landmarks 
everywhere, 
When all before him stretches, f urrowless 
and lone, 
The unmapped prairie none can fence or 
own ? 

What man would read and read the self- 
same faces, 
And, like the marbles which the wind- 
mill grinds, 
Bub smooth forever with the same 
smooth minds, 
This year retracing last year's, every 
year's, dull traces, 
When there are woods and un-penfolded 
spaces ? 

What man o'er one old thought would 
pore and pore, 
Shut like a book between its covers 

thin 
For every fool to leave his dog's-ears 
in, 
When solitude is his, and God forevermore, 
Just for the opening of a paltry door ? 

What man would watch life's oozy 
element 
Creep Letheward forever, when he 

might 
Down some great river drift beyond 
men's sight, 
To where the undethroned forest's royal 
tent 
Broods with its hush o'er half a conti- 
nent ? 

What man with men would push and al- 
tercate, 
Piecing out crooked means to crooked 

ends, 
When he can have the skies and woods 
for friends, 
Snatch back the rudder of his undismantled 
fate, 
And in himself be ruler, church, and 
state ? 



ODE TO FRANCE 



9 T 



Cast leaves and feathers rot in last year's 
nest, 
The winged brood, flown thence, new 

dwellings plan; 
The serf of his own Past is not a man; 
To change and change is life, to move and 
never rest ; — 
Not what we are, but what we hope, is 
best. 

The wild, free woods make no man halt 
or blind; 
Cities rob men of eyes and hands and 

feet, 
Patching one whole of many incom- 
plete ; 
The general preys upon the individual 
mind, 
And each alone is helpless as the wind. 

Each man is some man's servant; every 
soul 
Is by some other's presence quite dis- 
crowned; 
Each owes the next through all the 
imperfect round, 
Yet not with mutual help; each man is his 
own goal, 
And the whole earth must stop to pay 
him toll. 

Here, life the undiminished man de- 
mands; 

New faculties stretch out to meet new 
wants ; 

What Nature asks, that Nature also 
grants; 
Here man is lord, not drudge, of eyes and 
feet and hands, 

And to his life is knit with hourly 
bands. 

Come out, then, from the old thoughts 
and old ways, 
Before you harden to a crystal cold 
Which the new life can shatter, but 
not mould; 
Freedom for you still waits, still, looking 
backward, stays, 
But widens still the irretrievable space. 

LONGING 

Of all the myriad moods of mind 

That through the soul come thronging, 



Which one was e'er so dear, so kind, 

So beautiful as Longing ? 
The thing we long for, that we are 

For one transcendent moment, 
Before the Present poor and bare 

Can make its sneering comment. 

Still, through our paltry stir and strife, 

Glows down the wished Ideal, 
And Longing moulds in clay what Life 

Carves in the marble Real; 
To let the new life in, we know, 

Desire must ope the portal; 
Perhaps the longing to be so 

Helps make the soul immortal. 

Longing is God's fresh heavenward will 

With our poor earthward striving; 
We quench it that we may be still 

Content with merely living; 
But, would we learn that heart's full scope 

Which we are hourly wronging, 
Our lives must climb from hope to hope 

And realize our longing. 

Ah ! let us hope that to our praise 

Good God not only reckons 
The moments when we tread his ways, 

But when the spirit beckons, — 
That some slight good is also wrought 

Beyond self-satisfaction, 
When we are simply good in thought, 

Howe'er we fail in action. 



ODE TO FRANCE 



FEBRUARY, IS 



As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches 
Build up their imminent crags of noise- 
less snow, 
Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin 
launches 
In unwarned havoc on the roofs below, 
So grew and gathered through the silent 
years 
The madness of a People, wrong by 
wrong. 
There seemed no strength in the dumb 
toiler's tears, 
No strength in suffering; but the Past 
was strong: 
The brute despair of trampled centuries 



9 2 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



Leaped up with one hoarse yell and 

snapped its bands, 
Groped for its right with horny, callous 
hands, 
And stared around for God with bloodshot 
eyes. 
What wonder if those palms were all too 
hard 
For nice distinctions, — if that msenad 
throng — 
They whose thick atmosphere no bard 
Had shivered with the lightning of his 
song, 
Brutes with the memories and desires of 

men, 
Whose chronicles were writ with iron 
pen, 
In the crooked shoulder and the fore- 
head low, 
Set wrong to balance wrong, 
And physicked woe with woe ? 



They did as they were taught; not theirs 

the blame, 
If men who scattered firebrands reaped the 
flame: 
They trampled Peace beneath their sav- 
age feet, 
And by her golden tresses drew 
Mercy along the pavement of the street. 
O Freedom ! Freedom ! is thy morning- 
dew 
So gory red ? Alas, thy light had 

ne'er 
Shone in upon the chaos of their lair ! 
They reared to thee such symbol as they 
knew, 
And worshipped it with flame and 

blood, 
A Vengeance, axe in hand, that stood 
Holding a tyrant's head up by the clotted 
hair. 



What wrongs the Oppressor suffered, these 

we know; 
These have found piteous voice in song 

and prose; 
But for the Oppressed, their darkness and 

their woe, 
Their grinding centuries, — what Muse 

had those ? 
Though hall and palace had nor eyes nor 

ears, 



Hardening a people's heart to senseless 
stone, 
Thou knewest them, O Earth, that drank 
their tears, 
O Heaven, that heard their inarticulate 
moan ! 
They noted down their fetters, link by 

link; 
Coarse was the hand that scrawled, and 
red the ink; 
Rude was their score, as suits unlettered 
men, 
Notched with a headsman's axe upon a- 

block: 
What marvel if, when came the avenging 
shock, 
'T was Ate, not Urania, held the pen ? 



With eye averted, and an anguished frown, 
Loath ingly glides the Muse through 
scenes of strife, 
Where, like the heart of Vengeance up 
and down, 
Throbs in its framework the blood- 
muffled knife; 
Slow are the steps of Freedom, but her feet 
Turn never backward: hers no bloody 
glare ; 
Her light is calm, and innocent, and sweet, 
And where it enters there is no despair : 
Not first on palace and cathedral spire 
Quivers and gleams that unconsumingfire; 
While these stand black against her 
morning skies, 
The peasant sees it leap from peak to peak 
Along his hills; the craftsman's burning 
eyes 
Own with cool tears its influence mother- 
meek; 
It lights the poet's heart up like a star; 
Ah ! while the tyrant deemed it still 
afar, 
And twined with golden threads his futile 
snare, 
That swift, convicting glow all round 
him ran; 
'T was close beside him there, 
Sunrise whose Memnon is the soul of man. 



O Broker-King, is this thy wisdom's fruit ? 
A dynasty plucked out as 't were a weed 
Grown rankly in a night, that leaves no 



ODE TO FRANCE 



93 



Could eighteen years strike down no deeper 
root? 
But now thy vulture eye was turned on 
Spain; 
A shout from Paris, and thy crown falls off, 

Thy race has ceased to reign, 
And thou become a fugitive and scoff: 
Slippery the feet that mount by stairs of 

gold, 
And weakest of all fences one of steel; 
Go and keep school again like him of 
old, 
The Syracusan tyrant; — thou mayst feel 
Royal amid a birch-swayed commonweal ! 



Not long can he be ruler who allows 

His time to run before him; thou wast 
naught 
Soon as the strip of gold about thy brows 
Was no more emblem of the People's 
thought: 
Vain were thy bayonets against the foe 
Thou hadst to cope with; thou didst 
wage 
War not with Frenchmen merely; — no, 

Thy strife was with the Spirit of the Age, 
The invisible Spirit whose first breath di- 
vine 
Scattered thy frail endeavor, 
And, like poor last year's leaves, whirled 
thee and thine 

Into the Dark forever ! 



Is here no triumph ? Nay, what though 
The yellow blood of Trade meanwhile 
should pour 
Along its arteries a shrunken flow, 
And the idle canvas droop around the 
shore ? 

These do not make a state, 
Nor keep it great; 
I think God made 
The earth for man, not trade; 
And where each humblest human creature 
Can stand, no more suspicious or afraid, 
Erect and kingly in his right of nature, 
To heaven and earth knit with harmonious 
ties, — 
Where I behold the exultation 
Of manhood glowing in those eyes 
That had been dark for ages, 
Or only lit with bestial loves and 
rages, 



There I behold a Nation: 

The France which lies 
Between the Pyrenees and Rhine 
Is the least part of France; 
I see her rather in the soul whose shine 
Burns through the craftsman's grimy 
countenance, 
In the new energy divine 

Of Toil's enfranchised glance. 



And if it be a dream, 
If the great Future be the little Past 
'Neath a new mask, which drops and 

shows at last 
The same weird, mocking face to balk 
and blast, 
Yet, Muse, a gladder measure suits the 
theme, 

And the Tyrtsean harp 
Loves notes more resolute and sharp, 
Throbbing, as throbs the bosom, hot and 
fast: 

Such visions are of morning, 
Theirs is no vague forewarning, 
The dreams which nations dream come true, 
And shape the world anew; 
If this be a sleep, 
Make it long, make it deep, 
O Father, who sendest the harvests men reap ! 
While Labor so sleepeth, 
His sorrow is gone, 
No longer he weepeth, 
But smileth and steepeth 

His thoughts in the dawn; 
He heareth Hope yonder 

Rain, lark-like, her fancies, 
His dreaming hands wander 
Mid heart's-ease and pansies; 
" 'T is a dream ! 'T is a vision ! " 

Shrieks Mammon aghast; 
" The day's broad derision 
Will chase it at last; 
Ye are mad, ye have taken 
A slumbering kraken 

For firm land of the Past ! " 
Ah ! if he awaken, 

God shield us all then, 

If this dream rudely shaken 

Shall cheat him again ! 



Since first I heard our North-wind blow, 

Since first I saw Atlantic throw 

On our grim rocks his thunderous snow, 



L 



94 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



I loved thee, Freedom; as a boy 
The rattle of thy shield at Marathon 
Did with a Grecian joy 
Through all my pulses run; 
But I have learned to love thee now 
Without the helm upon thy gleaming brow, 

A maiden mild and undefiled 
Like her who bore the world's redeeming 
child; 
And surely never did thine altars glance 
With purer fires than now in France; 
While, in their clear white flashes, 
Wrong's shadow, backward cast, 
Waves cowering o'er the ashes 

Of the dead, blaspheming Past, 
O'er the shapes of fallen giants, 

His own unburied brood, 
Whose dead hands clench defiance 
At the overpowering Good: 
And down the happy future runs a flood 

Of prophesying light; 
It shows an Earth no longer stained with 

blood, 
Blossom and fruit where now we see the bud 
Of Brotherhood and Eight. 

ANTI-APIS 

Praisest Law, friend ? We, too, love it 

much as they that love it best; 
'T is the deep, august foundation, whereon 

Peace and Justice rest; 
On the rock primeval, hidden in the Past 

its bases be, 
Block by block the endeavoring Ages built 

it up to what we see. 

But dig down: the Old unbury; thou shalt 

find on every stone 
That each Age hath carved the symbol of 

what god to them was known, 
Ugly shapes and brutish sometimes, but 

the fairest that they knew; 
If their sight were dim and earthward, yet 

their hope and aim were true. 

Surely as the unconscious needle feels the 

far-off loadstar draw, 
So strives every gracious nature to afc-one 

itself with law; 
And the elder Saints and Sages laid their 

pious framework right 
By a theocratic instinct covered from the 

people's sight. 



As their gods were, so their laws were; 

Thor the strong could reave and 

steal, 
So through many a peaceful inlet tore the 

Norseman's eager keel; 
But a new law came when Christ came, 

and not blameless, as before, 
Can we, paying him our lip-tithes, give our 

lives and faiths to Thor. 

Law is holy: ay, but what law ? Is there 

nothing more divine 
Than the patched-up broils of Congress, 

venal, full of meat and wine ? 
Is there, say you, nothing higher ? Naught, 

God save us ! that transcends 
Laws of cotton texture, wove by vulgar 

men for vulgar ends ? 

Did Jehovah ask their counsel, or submit 

to them a plan, 
Ere he filled with loves, hopes, longings, 

this aspiring heart of man ? 
For their edict does the soul wait, ere it 

swing round to the pole 
Of the true, the free, the God-willed, all 

that makes it be a soul ? 

Law is holy; but not your law, ye who 

keep the tablets whole 
While ye dash the Law to pieces, shatter it 

in life and soul; 
Bearing up the Ark is lightsome, golden 

Apis hid within, 
While we Levites share the offerings, richer 

by the people's sin. 

Give to Csesar what is Caesar's ? yes, but 

tell me, if you can, 
Is this superscription Csesar's here upon 

our brother man ? 
Is not here some other's image, dark and 

sullied though it be, 
In this fellow-soul that worships, struggles 

Godward even as we ? 

It was not to such a future that the May- 
flower's prow was turned, 

Not to such a faith the martyrs clung, ex- 
ulting as they burned; 

Not by such laws are men fashioned, ea 
nest, simple, valiant, great 

In the household virtues whereon rests the 
unconquerable state. 



A PARABLE 



95 



Ah ! there is a higher gospel, overhead the 

God-roof springs, 
I And each glad, obedient planet like a 

golden shuttle sings 
Through the web which Time is weaving 

in his never-resting loom, 
Weaving seasons many - colored, bringing 

prophecy to doom. 

Think you Truth a farthing rushlight, to 

be pinched out when you will 
With your deft official fingers, and your 

politicians' skill ? 
"s your God a wooden fetish, to be hidden 

out of sight 
'hat his block eyes may not see you do the 
thing that is not right ? 

(But the Destinies think not so; to their 

judgment-chamber lone 
Comes no noise of popular clamor, there 

Fame's trumpet is not blown; 
Your majorities they reck not; that you 

grant, but then you say 
That you differ with them somewhat, — 

which is stronger, you or they ? 

Patient are they as the insects that build 

islands in the deep; 
They hurl not the bolted thunder, but their 

silent way they keep; 
Where they have been that we know; 

where empires towered that were 

not just; 
Lo ! the skulking wild fox scratches in a 

little heap of dust. 

A PARABLE 

Said Christ our Lord, " I will go and see 
How the men, my brethren, believe in me." 
He passed not again through the gate of 

birth, 
But made himself known to the children of 

earth. 

Then said the chief priests, and rulers, and 



"Behold, uow, the Giver of all good things; 
Go to, let us welcome with pomp and state 
Him who alone is mighty and great." 

With carpets of gold the ground they 

spread 
Wherever the Son of Man should tread, 



And in palace-chambers lofty and rare 
They lodged him, and served him with 
kingly fare. 

Great organs surged through arches dim 
Their jubilant floods in praise of him; 
And in church, and palace, and judgment- 
hall, 
He saw his own image high over all. 

But still, wherever his steps they led, 
The Lord in sorrow bent down his head, 
And from under the heavy foundation- 
stones, 
The son of Mary heard bitter groans. 

And in church, and palace, and judgment- 
hall, 
He marked great fissures that rent the wall, 
And opened wider and yet more wide 
As the living foundation heaved and sighed. 

" Have ye founded your thrones and altars, 

then, 
On the bodies and souls of living men ? 
And think ye that building shall endure, 
Which shelters the noble and crushes the 

poor ? 

" With gates of silver and bars of gold 
Ye have fenced my sheep from their 

Father's fold; 
I have heard the dropping of their tears 
In heaven these eighteen hundred years." 

" O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt, 
We build but as our fathers built; 
Behold thine images, how they stand, 
Sovereign and sole, through all our land. 

" Our task is hard, — with sword and flame 
To hold thine earth forever the same, 
And with sharp crooks of steel to keep 
Still, as thou leftest them, thy sheep." 

Then Christ sought out an artisan, 
A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, 
And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin 
Pushed from her faintly want and sin. 

These set he in the midst of them, 
And as they drew back their garment- 
hem, 
For fear of defilement, "Lo, here," said he, 
" The images ye have made of me ! " 



9 6 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



ODE 

WRITTEN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE 
INTRODUCTION OF THE COCHITUATE 
WATER INTO THE CITY OF BOSTON 

The public system of water works in Boston 
dates from October 25, 1848, when with much 
ceremony the water of Lake Coehituate, for- 
merly called Long 1 Pond, was turned into the 
reservoir which then occupied the site of the 
present extension of the State House, and a 
stream was conducted into the Frog Pond on 
Boston Common, where the pressure gave head 
to a fine jet. Besides the Ode, a selection was 
sung from the oratorio of Elijah, and addresses 
were made by the mayor and the chairman of 
the water commissioners. 

My name is Water: I have sped 

Through strange, dark ways, untried 
before, 

By pure desire of friendship led, 
Cochituate's ambassador; 

He sends four royal gifts by me: 

Long life, health, peace, and purity. 

I'm Ceres' cup-bearer; I pour, 

For flowers and fruits and all their kin, 

Her crystal vintage, from of yore 
Stored in old Earth's selectest bin, 

Flora's Falernian ripe, since God 

The wine-press of the deluge trod. 

In that far isle whence, iron-willed, 

The New World's sires their bark un- 
moored, 
The fairies' acorn-cups I filled 

Upon the toadstool's silver board, 
And, 'neath Heme's oak, for Shakespeare's 

sight, 
Strewed moss and grass with diamonds 
bright. 

No fairies in the Mayflower came, 
And, lightsome as I sparkle here, 

For Mother Bay State, busy dame, 

I 've toiled and drudged this many a 
year, 

Throbbed in her engines' iron veins, 

Twirled myriad spindles for her gains. 

I, too, can weave: the warp I set 

Through which the sun his shuttle 
throws, 



And, bright as Noah saw it, yet 

For you the arching rainbow glows, 
A sight in Paradise denied 
To unfallen Adam and his bride. 

When Winter held me in his grip, 

You seized and sent me o'er the wave, 

Ungrateful ! in a prison-ship ; 
But I forgive, not long a slave, 

For, soon as summer south-winds blew, 

Homeward I fled, disguised as dew. 

For countless services I 'm fit, 
Of use, of pleasure, and of gain, 

But lightly from all bonds I flit, 

Nor lose my mirth, nor feel a stain; 

From mill and wash-tub I escape, 

And take in heaven my proper shape. 

So, free myself, to-day, elate 

I come from far o'er hill and mead, 

And here, Cochituate's envoy, wait 
To be your blithesome Ganymede, 

And brim your cups with nectar true 

That never will make slaves of you. 



LINES 

SUGGESTED BY THE GRAVES OF TWO 
ENGLISH SOLDIERS ON CONCORD BAT- 
TLE-GROUND 

The same good blood that now refills 
The dotard Orient's shrunken veins, 
The same whose vigor westward thrills, 
Bursting Nevada's silver chains, 
Poured here upon the April grass, 
Freckled with red the herbage new; 
On reeled the battle's trampling mass, 
Back to the ash the bluebird flew. 

Poured here in vain; — that sturdy blood 
Was meant to make the earth more green, 
But in a higher, gentler mood 
Than broke this April noon serene; 
Two graves are here: to mark the place, 
At head and foot, an unhewn stone, 
O'er which the herald lichens trace 
The blazon of Oblivion. 

These men were brave enough, and frue 
To the hired soldier's bull-dog creed; 
What brought them here they never knew, 
They fought as suits the English breed: 



I 



FREEDOM 



97 



I They came three thousand miles, and died, 
I To keep the Past upon its throne; 
Unheard, beyond the ocean tide, 
Their English mother made her moan. 

The turf that covers them no thrill 
Sends up to fire the heart and brain; 
No stronger purpose nerves the will, 
No hope renews its youth again: 
From farm to farm the Concord glides, 
And trails my fancy with its flow; 
J O'erhead the balanced hen-hawk slides, 
f Twinned in the river's heaven below. 

1 But go, whose Bay State bosom stirs, 
Proud of thy birth and neighbor's right, 

' Where sleep the heroic villagers 
Borne red and stiff from Concord fight; 
Thought Reuben, snatching down his gun, 
Or Seth, as ebbed the life away, 
What earthquake rifts would shoot and run 
World-wide from that short April fray ? 

What then? With heart and hand they 

wrought, 
According to their village light; 
'T was for the Future that they fought, 
Their rustic faith in what was right. 
Upon earth's tragic stage they burst 
Unsummoned, in the humble sock; 
Theirs the fifth act; the curtain first 
Rose long ago on Charles's block. 

Their graves have voices; if they threw 
Dice charged with fates beyond their ken, 
Yet to their instincts they were true, 
And had the genius to be men. 
Fine privilege of Freedom's host, 
Of humblest soldiers for the Right ! — 
Age after age ye hold your post, 
Your graves send courage forth, and 
might. 



TO 



We, too, have autumns, when our leaves 
Drop loosely through the dampened air, 

When all our good seems bound in sheaves, 
And we stand reaped and bare. 

Our seasons have no fixed returns, 
Without our will they come and go; 

At noon our sudden summer burns, 
Ere sunset all is snow. 



But each day brings less summer cheer, 
Crimps more our ineffectual spring, 

And something earlier every year 
Our singing birds take wing. 

As less the olden glow abides, 

And less the chillier heart aspires, 

With drift-wood beached in past spring- 
tides 
We light our sullen fires. 

By the pinched rushlight's starving beam 
We cower and strain our wasted sight, 

To stitch youth's shroud up, seam by seam, 
In the long arctic night. 

It was not so — we once were young — 
When Spring, to womanly Summer turn- 
ing* 

Her dew-drops on each grass-blade strung, 
In the red sunrise burning. 

We trusted then, aspired, believed 

That earth could be remade to-morrow; 

Ah, why be ever undeceived ? 
Why give up faith for sorrow ? 

thou, whose days are yet all spring, 
Faith, blighted one, is past retrieving; 

Experience is a dumb, dead thing; 
The victory 's in believing. 

FREEDOM 

In a letter to Mr. Norton, written June 29, 
1859, Mr. Lowell refers to English comments 
on the Austro-Italian war, then in its early 
stages, and alludes to a quotation which Mr. 
Bright had made from his writings. "But," 
he says, " I fear he thinks me too much of a 
Quaker. In my Poems there are some verses 
on ' Freedom ' written in '48 or '49. They 
ended thus as originally written. I left the 
verses out only because I did not think them 
good, — not because I did not like tb<~ sentiment. 

1 have strength of mind enough not to change 
a word — though I see how much better I 
might make it." He then copies the lines 
which below are separated from the poem by 
a long dash, and adds : " I think it must have 
been written in 1848, for I remember that, as I 
first composed it, it had ' Fair Italy ' instead 
of ' Humanity.' " 

Are we, then, wholly fallen ? Can it be 
That thou, North wind, that from thy 
mountains bringest 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



Their spirit to our plains, and thou, blue 

sea, 
Who on our rocks thy wreaths of freedom 

flingest, 
As on an altar, — can it be that ye 
Have wasted inspiration on dead ears, 
Dulled with the too familiar clank of 

chains ? 
The people's heart is like a harp for years 
Hung where some petrifying torrent rains 
Its slow - incrusting spray : the stiffened 

chords 
Faint and more faint make answer to the 

tears 
That drip upon them: idle are all words: 
Only a golden plectrum wakes the tone 
Deep buried 'neath that ever-thickening 

stone. 

We are not free: doth Freedom, then, con- 
sist 
In musing with our faces toward the Past, 
While petty cares and crawling interests 

twist 
Their spider-threads about us, which at last 
Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and 

bind 
In formal narrowness heart, soul, and 

mind ? 
Freedom is recreated year by year, 
In hearts wide open on the Godward side, 
In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling 

sphere, 
In minds that sway the future like a tide. 
No broadest creeds can hold her, and no 

codes; 
She chooses men for her august abodes, 
Building them fair and fronting to the 

dawn; 
Yet, when we seek her, we but find a few 
Light footprints, leading morn - ward 

through the dew: 
Before the day had risen, she was gone. 

And we must follow: swiftly runs she on, 
And, if our steps should slacken in despair, 
Half turns her face, half smiles through 

golden hair, 
Forever yielding, never wholly won: 
That is not love which pauses in the race 
Two close-linked names on fleeting sand 

to trace; 
Freedom gained yesterday is no more ours ; 
Men gather but dry seeds of last year's 

flowers; 



Still there 's a charm ungranted, still a 

grace, 
Still rosy Hope, the free, the unattained, 
Makes us Possession's languid hand let 

fall; 
'T is but a fragment of ourselves is gained, 
The Future brings us more, but never all. 

And, as the finder of some unknown realm, 
Mounting a summit whence he thinks to 

see 
On either side of him the imprisoning sea, 
Beholds, above the clouds that overwhelm 
The valley-land, peak after snowy peak 
Stretch out of sight, each like a silver I 

helm 
Beneath its plume of smoke, sublime and \ 

bleak, 
And what he thought an island finds to be 
A continent to him first oped, — so we 
Can from our height of Freedom look along 
A boundless future, ours if we be strong; 
Or if we shrink, better remount our ships 
And, fleeing God's express design, trace 

back 
The hero-freighted Mayflower's prophet- 
track 
To Europe entering her blood-red eclipse. 



Therefore of Europe now I will not doubt, 
For the broad foreheads surely win the 

day, 
And brains, not crowns or soul-gelt armies, 

weigh 
In Fortune's scales: such dust she brushes 

out. 
Most gracious are the conquests of the 

Word, 
Gradual and silent as a flower's increase, 
And the best guide from old to new is 

Peace — 
Yet, Freedom, thou canst sanctify the 

sword ! 

Bravely to do whate'er the time demands, 

Whether with pen or sword, and not to 
flinch, 

This is the task that fits heroic hands; 

So are Truth's boundaries widened inch by 
inch. 

I do not love the Peace which tyrants 
make; 

The calm she breeds let the sword's light- 
ning break ! 



BEAVER BROOK 



99 



It is the tyrants who have beaten out 
Ploughshares and pruning-hooks to spears 

and swords, 
And shall I pause and moralize and doubt ? 
Whose veins run water let him mete his 

words ! 
Each fetter sundered is the whole world's 

gain ! 
And rather than humanity remain 
A pearl beneath the feet of Austrian swine, 
Welcome to me whatever breaks a chain. 
That surely is of God, and all divine ! 



BIBLIOLATRES 

Bowing thyself in dust before a Book, 
And thinking the great God is thine alone, 
O rash iconoclast, thou wilt not brook 
What gods the heathen carves in wood and 

stone, 
As if the Shepherd who from the outer 

cold 
Leads all his shivering lambs to one sure 

fold 
Were careful for the fashion of his crook. 

There is no broken reed so poor and base, 
No rush, the bending tilt of swamp-fly 

blue, 
But He therewith the ravening wolf can 

chase, 
And guide his flock to springs and pastures 

new; 
Through ways unlooked for, and through 

many lands, 
Far from the rich folds built with human 

hands, 
The gracious footprints of his love I trace. 

And what art thou, own brother of the clod, 
That from his hand the crook wouldst 

snatch away 
And shake instead thy dry and sapless rod, 
To scare the sheep out of the wholesome 

day? 
Yea, what art thou, blind, unconverted 

Jew, 

That with thy idol-volume's covers two 
Wouldst make a jail to coop the livine- 

God? * 6 

Thou hear'st not well the mountain organ- 
tones 
By prophet ears from Hor and Sinai caught, 



Thinking the cisterns of those Hebrew 

brains 
Drew dry the springs of the All-knower's 

thought, 
Nor shall thy lips be touched with living 

fire, 
Who blow'st old altar-coals with sole 

desire 
To weld anew the spirit's broken chains. 

God is not dumb, that He should speak no 
more; 

If thou hast wanderings in the wilder- 
ness 

And find'st not Sinai, 't is thy soul is poor; 

There towers the Mountain of the Voice no 
less, 

Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who 
bends, 

Intent on manna still and mortal ends, 

Sees it not, neither hears its thundered 
lore. 

Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, 
And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone; 
Each age, each kindred, adds a' verse to it, 
Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. 
While swings the sea, while mists the 

mountains shroud, 
While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of 

cloud, 
Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit. 



BEAVER BROOK 

. . . " Don't you like the poem [Beaver 
Brook] I sent you last week ? I was inclined 
to think pretty well of it, hut I have not seen 
it in print yet. The little mill stands in a val- 
ley between one of the spurs of Wellington 
Hill and the main summit, just on the edge of 
Waltham. It is surely one of the loveliest 
spots in the world. It is one of my lions, and 
if you will make me a visit this spring- I will 
take you up to hear it roar, and I will show you 
' the oaks ' — the largest, I fancy, left in the 
country." Letters I. 149. The poem was sent 
to Mr. Gay for the Standard. These oaks are 
now known as the Waverley Oaks, and are to 
be preserved. 

Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill, 
And, minuting the long day's loss, 

The cedar's shadow, slow and still, 
Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss. 



MEMORIAL VERSES 



Warm noon brims full the valley's cup, 
The aspen's leaves are scarce astir; 

Only the little mill sends up 
Its busy, never-ceasing burr. 

Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems 
The road along the mill-pond's brink, 

From 'neath the arching barberry-stems, 
My footstep scares the shy chewink. 

Beneath a bony buttonwood 

The mill's red door lets forth the din; 
The whitened miller, dust-imbued, 

Flits past the square of dark within. 

No mountain torrent's strength is here; 

Sweet Beaver, child of forest still, 
Heaps its small pitcher to the ear, 

And gently waits the miller's will. 

Swift slips Undine along the race 

Unheard, and then, with flashing bound, 

Floods the dull wheel with light and grace, 
And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge 
round. 

The miller dreams not at what cost 

The quivering millstones hum and whirl, 



Nor how for every turn are tost 
Armfuls of diamond and of pearl. 

But Summer cleared my happier eyes 
With drops of some celestial juice, 

To see how Beauty underlies 
Forevermore each form of use. 

And more; methought I saw that flood, 
Which now so dull and darkling steals, 

Thick, here and there, with human blood, 
To turn the world's laborious wheels. 

No more than doth the miller there, 
Shut in our several cells, do we 

Know with what waste of beauty rare 
Moves every day's machinery. 

Surely the wiser time shall come 
When this fine overplus of might, 

No longer sullen, slow, and dumb, 
Shall leap to music and to light. 

In that new childhood of the Earth 
Life of itself shall dance and play, 

Fresh blood in Time's shrunk veins make 
mirth, 
And labor meet delight half-way. 



MEMORIAL VERSES 



KOSSUTH 

A race of nobles may die out, 
A royal line may leave no heir; 

Wise Nature sets no guards about 
Her pewter plate and wooden ware. 

But they fail not, the kinglier breed, 

Who starry diadems attain; 
To dungeon, axe, and stake succeed 

Heirs of the old heroic strain. 

The zeal of Nature never cools, 
Nor is she thwarted of her ends ; 

When gapped and dulled her cheaper tools, 
Then she a saint and prophet spends. 

Land of the Magyars ! though it be 
The tyrant may relink his chain, 

Already thine the victory, 

As the just Future measures gain. 



Thou hast succeeded, thou hast won 
The deathly travail's amplest worth; 

A nation's duty thou hast done, 
Giving a hero to our earth. 

And he, let come what will of woe, 

Hath saved the land he strove to save ; 

No Cossack hordes, no traitor's blow, 

Can quench the voice shall haunt his 
grave. 

"I Kossuth am: O Future, thou 

That clear'st the just and blott'st the vile, 

O'er this small dust in reverence bow, 
Remembering what I was ere while. 

" I was the chosen trump wherethrough 
Our God sent forth awakening breath; 

Came chains ? Came death ? The strain 
He blew 
Sounds on, outliving chains and death." 



TO JOHN GORHAM PALFREY 



TO LAMARTINE 

1848 

I did not praise thee when the crowd, 

'Witched with the moment's inspira- 
tion, 
Vexed thy still ether with hosannas loud, 
And stamped their dusty adoration ; 
I but looked upward with the rest, 
And, when they shouted Greatest, whis- 
pered Best. 

They raised thee not, but rose to thee, 

Their fickle wreaths about thee fling- 
ing; 
So on some marble Phcebus the swol'n sea 
Might leave his worthless seaweed 
clinging, 
But pious hands, with reverent care, 
Make the pure limbs once more sublimely 
bare. 

Now thou 'rt thy plain, grand self again, 

Thou art secure from panegyric, 
Thou who gav'st politics an epic strain, 
And actedst Freedom's noblest lyric; 
This side the Blessed Isles, no tree 
Grows green enough to make a wreath for 
thee. 

Nor can blame cling to thee ; the snow 

From swinish footprints takes no stain- 
ing, 
But, leaving the gross soils of earth below, 
Its spirit mounts, the skies regaining, 
And unresentful falls again, 
To beautify the world with dews and rain. 

The highest duty to mere man vouchsafed 
Was laid ou thee, — out of wild chaos, 
When the roused popular ocean foamed 
and chafed 
And vulture War from his Imaus 
Snuffed blood, to summon homely Peace, 
And show that only order is release. 

To carve thy fullest thought, what though 
Time was not granted ? Aye in his- 
tory, 
Like that Dawn's face which baffled Angelo 
Left shapeless, grander for its mystery, 
Thy great Design shall stand, and day 
Flood its blind front from Orients far 



Who says thy day is o'er ? Control, 

My heart, that bitter first emotioi 
While men shall reverence the stea 
soul, 
The heart in silent self-devotion 
Breaking, the mild, heroic mien, 
Thou 'It need no prop of marble, L; . 
tine. 

If France reject thee, 't is not thine, 

But her own, exile that she utter.' 
Ideal France, the deathless, the divim 
Will be where thy white pennon 
ters, 
As once the nobler Athens went 
With Aristides into banishment. 

No fitting metewand hath To-day 

For measuring spirits of thy stat 
Only the Future can reach up to lay 
The laurel on that lofty nature, 
Bard, who with some diviner art 
Hast touched the bard's true lyre, a ns 
heart. 

Swept by thy hand, the gladdened ch 
Crashed now in discords fierr 
others, 
Gave forth one note beyond all sk 
words, 
And chimed together, We are bro 
O poem unsurpassed ! it ran 
All round the world, unlocking m; 



France is too poor to pay alone 

The service of that ample spirit; 

Paltry seem low dictatorship and thrc 

Weighed with thy self - renou 

merit; 

They had to thee been rust and loss 

Thy aim was higher, — thou hast cli 

a Cross ! 



TO JOHN GORHAM PALFR 

Dr. Palfrey, whose name is for studen 
soeiated mainly with his History of New - 
land, was one of the most consistent and 
anti-slavery men of his day. Chosen to 
gress as a Whig member, he refused to su 
the Whig- candidate for the Speakership c 
House, because he was assured that the c 
date, Mr. Winthrop, would not use his po; 
to obstruct the extension of the slave p 



MEMORIAL VERSES 



TJ >.is incident called out the fourth of the first 
3s of Biglow Papers. 

There are who triumph in a losing 
cause, 
o can put on defeat, as 't were a wreath 
Ln withering in the adverse popular breath, 
Safe from the blasting demagogue's ap- 
plause; 
'T is they who stand for Freedom and 
God's laws. 

And so stands Palfrey now, as Marvell 

stood, 
Loyal to Truth dethroned, nor could be 
wooed 
To trust the playful tiger's velvet paws : 
And if the second Charles brought in decay 
Of ancient virtue, if it well might wring 
Souls that had broadened 'neath a nobler 
day, 
To see a losel, marketable king 
Fearfully watering with his realm's best 
blood 
Cromwell's quenched bolts, that erst had 
cracked and flamed, 
Scaring, through all their depths of courtier 
mud, 
Europe's crowned bloodsuckers, — how 
more ashamed 
O ight we to be, who see Corruption's flood 
Still rise o'er last year's mark, to mine 

away 
Our brazen idol's feet of treacherous 
clay! 

utter degradation ! Freedom turned 
Slavery's vile bawd, to cozen and betray 
To the old lecher's clutch a maiden prey, 
so a loathsome pander's fee be earned ! 
And we are silent, — we who daily tread 
A soil sublime, at least, with heroes' 
graves ! — 
Beckon no more, shades of the noble 
dead ! 
Be dumb, ye heaven-touched lips of winds 
and waves ! 
Or hope to rouse some Coptic dullard, 
hid 
Ages ago, wrapt stiffly, fold on fold, 
With cerements close, to wither in the cold, 
Forever hushed, and sunless pyramid ! 

Beauty and Truth, and all that these 
contain, 



Drop not like ripened fruit about our feet; 
We climb to them through years of 

sweat and pain; 
Without long struggle, none did e'er at- 
tain 
The downward look from Quiet's blissful 
seat: 
Though present loss may be the hero's 

part, 
Yet none can rob him of the victor heart 
Whereby the broad-realmed future is sub- 
dued, 
And Wrong, which now insults from tri- 
umph's car, 
Sending her vulture hope to raven far, 
Is made unwilling tributary of Good. 

Mother State, how quenched thy Sinai 
fires ! 
Is there none left of thy stanch May- 
flower breed ? 
No spark among the ashes of thy sires, 
Of Virtue's altar-flame the kindling 
seed ? 
Are these thy great men, these that cringe 
and creep, 
And writhe through slimy ways to place 
and power ? — 
How long, O Lord, before thy wrath shall 
reap 
Our frail-stemmed summer prosperings 
in their flower ? 
Oh for one hour of that undaunted stock 
That went with Vane and Sidney to the 
block ! 

Oh for a whiff of Naseby, that would 
sweep, 
With its stern Puritan besom, all this 

chaff 
From the Lord's threshing-floor ! Yet 
more than half 
The victory is attained, when one or two, 
Through the fool's laughter and the 

traitor's scorn, 
Beside thy sepulchre can bide the morn, 
Crucified Truth, when thou shalt rise 



TO W. L. GARRISON 

"Some time afterward, it was reported to 
me by the city officers that they had ferreted 
out the paper and its editor; that his office 



TO W. L. GARRISON 



was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary 
a( negro boy, and his supporters a few very in- 
significant persons of all colors." — Letter of 
II. G. Otis. 

I This significant sentence printed at its head 
g'ave the key-note to the following poem, but 
it is interesting to read the characterization of 
Garrison drawn by Mr. Lowell at this same time, 
hi a letter to C. F. Briggs dated March 26, 1848. 
" I do not agree with the abolitionists in their 
disunion and non- voting theories. They treat 
ideas as ignorant persons do cherries. They 
think them unwholesome unless they are swal- 
lowed, stones and all. Garrison is so used to 
standing alone that, like Daniel Boone, he 
moves away as the world creeps up to him, and 
gbes farther into the wilderness. He considers 
e Very step a step forward, though it be over the 
e Ige of a precipice. But, with all his faults 
(and they are the faults of his position) he is a 
great and extraordinary man. His work may 
be over, but it has been a great work. ... I 
respect Garrison (respect does not include love). 
Remember that Garrison was so long in a posi- 
tion where he alone was right and all the world 
wrong, that such a position has created in him 
a habit of mind which may remain, though 
circumstances have wholly changed. Indeed a 
mind of that cast is essential to a Reformer. 
Luther was as infallible as any man that ever 
held St. Peter's keys." Letters I. 125, 126. 

In a small chamber, friendless and un- 
seen, 
Toiled o'er his types one poor, unlearned 
young man; 
The place was dark, unfurnitured, and 
mean; 
Yet there the freedom of a race began. 

Help came but slowly ; surely no man 

yet 

Put lever to the heavy world with less: 

What need of help ? He knew how types 

were set, 

He had a dauntless spirit, and a press. 

Such earnest natures are the fiery pith, 
The compact nucleus, round which sys- 
tems grow; 
Mass after mass becomes inspired there- 
with, 
And whirls impregnate with the central 
glow. 

O Truth ! O Freedom ! how are ye still 
born 
In the rude stable, in the manger nurst ! 



What humble hands unbar those gates of 
morn 
Through which the splendors of the New 
Day burst ! 

What ! shall one monk, scarce known be- 
yond his cell, 
Front Rome's far-reaching bolts, and 
scorn her frown ? « 
Brave Luther answered Yes; that thun- 
der's swell 
Rocked Europe, and discharmed the 
triple crown. 

Whatever can be known of earth we know, 
Sneered Europe's wise men, in their 
snail-shells curled; 
No ! said one man in Genoa, and that No 
Out of the darkness summoned this New 
World. 

Who is it will not dare himself to trust ? 
Who is it hath not strength to stand 
alone ? 
Who is it thwarts and bilks the inward 

MUST ? 

He and his works, like sand, from earth 
are blown. 

Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look 
here ! 
See one straightforward conscience put 
in pawn 
To win a world; see the obedient sphere 
By bravery's simple gravitation drawn ! 

Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old, 
And by the Present's lips repeated still, 

In our own single manhood to be bold, 
Fortressed in conscience and impregnable 
will? 

We stride the river daily at its spring, 
Nor, in our childish thoughtlessness, 
foresee 
What myriad vassal streams shall tribute 
bring, 
How like an equal it shall greet the sea. 

O small beginnings, ye are great and strong, 

Based on a faithful heart and weariless 

brain ! 

Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong, 

Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in 

vain. 



io4 



MEMORIAL VERSES 



ON THE DEATH OF CHARLES 
TURNER TORREY 

The Martyr Torrey was the name applied to 
this clergyman, who gave np his professional 
life in order to devote himself to the anti- 
slavery cause in Maryland. He was con- 
demned to long imprisonment for aiding in the 
escape of slaves, hut died in the penitentiary, 
May, 1846, of disease Drought on by ill usage. 
His body was taken to Boston, and the funeral 
made a profound impression on the community. 

Woe worth the hour when it is crime 

To plead the poor dumb bondman's cause, 
When all that makes the heart sublime, 
The glorious throbs that conquer time, 
Are traitors to our cruel laws ! 

He strove among God's suffering poor 
One gleam of brotherhood to send; 
The dungeon oped its hungry door 
To give the truth one martyr more, 
Then shut, — and here behold the end ! 

O Mother State ! when this was done, 
No pitying throe thy bosom gave; 

Silent thou saw'st the death-shroud spun, 

And now thou givest to thy son 
The stranger's charity, — a grave. 

Must it be thus forever ? No ! 

The hand of God sows not in vain, 
Long sleeps the darkling seed below, 
The seasons come, and change, and go, 

And all the fields are deep with grain. 

Although our brother lie asleep, 

Man's heart still struggles, still aspires; 
His grave shall quiver yet, while deep 
Through the brave Bay State's pulses leap 
Her ancient energies and fires. 

When hours like this the senses' gush 

Have stilled, and left the spirit room, 
It hears amid the eternal hush 
The swooping pinions' dreadful rush, 

That bring the vengeance and the 
doom; — 

Not man's brute vengeance, such as rends 

What rivets man to man apart, — 

God doth not so bring round his ends, 

But waits the ripened time, and sends 

His mercy to the oppressor's heart. 



ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF D. 
CHANNING 

I do not come to weep above thy pall, 

And mourn the dying - out of noble 

powers; 

The poet's clearer eye should see, in all 

Earth's seeming woe, seed of immorta 

flowers. 

Truth needs no champions: in the infinit 
deep 
Of everlasting Soul her strength abides. 
From Nature's heart her mighty pulsej 
leap, 
Through Nature's veins her strengtl 
undying, tides. 

Peace is more strong than war, and gentle 
ness, 
Where force were vain, makes conques 
o'er the wave; 
And love lives on and hath a power t 
bless, 
When they who loved are hidden in th 
grave. 

The sculptured marble brags of death ' 
strewn fields, 
And Glory's epitaph is writ in blood; 
But Alexander now to Plato yields, 

Clarkson will stand where Wellington 
hath stood. 

I watch the circle of the eternal years, 
And read forever in the storied page 
One lengthened roll of blood, and wrong,, 
and tears, 
One onward step of Truth from age to 
age. 

The poor are crushed; the tyrants link 
their chain; 
The poet sings through narrow dun- 
geon-grates; 
Man's hope lies quenched; and, lo ! with 
steadfast gain 
Freedom doth forge her mail of adverse 
fates. 

Men slay the prophets; fagot, rack, and J 
cross 
Make up the groaning record of the i 
past; 



TO THE MEMORY OF HOOD 



io 5 



B it Evil's triumphs are her endless loss, 
And sovereign Beauty wins the soul at 
' last. 

No power can die that ever wrought for 
Truth; 
Thereby a law of Nature it became, 
And lives unwithered in its blithesome 
youth, 
When he who called it forth is but a 
name. 

Therefore I cannot think thee wholly gone ; 

The better part of thee is with us still; 
Thy soul its hampering clay aside hath 
thrown, 

And only freer wrestles with the 111. 

Thou livest in the life of all good things; 
What words thou spak'st for Freedom 
shall not die ; 
Thou sleepest not, for now thy Love hath 
wings 
To soar where hence thy Hope could 
hardly fly. 

And often, from that other world, on this 
Some gleams from great souls gone be- 
fore may shine, 
To shed on struggling hearts a clearer bliss, 
And clothe the Right with lustre more 
divine. 

Thou art not idle: in thy higher sphere 
Thy spirit bends itself to loving tasks, 

And strength to perfect what it dreamed 
of here 
Is all the crown and glory that it asks. 

For sure, in Heaven's wide chambers, there 

is room 

For love and pity, and for helpful deeds; 

Else were our summons thither but a doom 

To life more vain than this in clayey 

weeds. 

From off the starry mountain-peak of song, 
Thy spirit shows me, in the coming time, 

An earth unwithered by the foot of wrong, 
A race revering its own soul sublime. 

What wars, what martyrdoms, what crimes, 

may come, 
i Thou knowest not, nor I; but God will 
/ lead 



The prodigal soul from want and sorrow 
home, 
And Eden ope her gates to Adam's seed. 

Farewell ! good man, good angel now ! 
this hand 
Soon, like thine own, shall lose its cun- 
ning too; 
Soon shall this soul, like thine, bewildered 
stand, 
Then leap to thread the free, unfathomed 
blue: 

When that day comes, oh, may this hand 
grow cold, 
Busy, like thine, for Freedom and the 
Right; 
Oh, may this soul, like thine, be ever bold 
To face dark Slavery's encroaching 
blight ! 

This laurel-leaf I cast upon thy bier; 

Let worthier hands than these thy wreath 
intwine; 
Upon thy hearse I shed no useless tear, — 

For us weep rather thou in calm divine ! 



TO THE MEMORY OF HOOD 

Another star 'neath Time's horizon 
dropped, 
To gleam o'er unknown lands and seas; 
Another heart that beat for freedom 
stopped, — 
What mournful words are these ! 

O Love Divine, that claspest our tired 
earth, 
And lullest it upon thy heart, 
Thou knowest how much a gentle soul is 
worth 
To teach men what thou art ! 

His was a spirit that to all thy poor 
Was kind as slumber after pain: 

Why ope so soon thy heaven-deep Quiet's 
door 
And call him home again ? 

Freedom needs all her poets: it is they 
Who give her aspirations wings, 

And to the wiser law of music sway 
Her wild imaginings. 



io6 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 



■livek 



Yet thou hast called him, nor art thou un- 
kind, 
O Love Divine, for 't is thy will 
That gracious natures leave their love be- 
hind 
To work for Mercy still. 

Let laurelled marbles weigh on other 
tombs, 
Let anthems peal for other dead, 
Rustling the bannered depth of minster- 
glooms 
With their exulting spread. 



His epitaph shall mock the short-livd . 
stone, 
No lichen shall its lines efface, 
He needs these few and simple lines 
alone 
To mark his resting-place : — 

" Here lies a Poet. Stranger, if to thee 
His claim to memory be obscure, 

If thou wouldst learn how truly great was 
he, 
Go, ask it of the poor." 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 



This poem was written apparently early in 
1848, for iu a letter to Mr. Briggs, dated Feb- 
ruary 1 of that year, Lowell, referring to it, 
says : " The new poem I spoke of is a sort of 
a story, and more likely to be popular than 
what I write generally. Maria thinks very 
highly of it. I shall probably publish it by 
itself next summer." The poem was published 
in the middle of December, 1848, and in an 
exuberant letter to Mr. Briggs shortly after it 
appeared, Lowell wrote : " Last night ... I 
walked to Watertown over the snow with the 
new moon before me and a sky exactly like 
that in Page's evening landscape. Orion was 
rising behind me, and, as I stood on the hill 
just before you enter the village, the stillness 
of the fields around me was delicious, broken 
only by the tinkle of a little brook which runs 
too swiftly for Frost to catch it. My picture of 
the brook in Sir Launfal was drawn from it." 
The following note was prefixed to the poem 
by its author. 

According to the mythology of the Roman- 
cers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup 



out of which Jesus partook of the Last Supper 
with his disciples. It was brought into Eng- 
land by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained 
there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration^ 
for many years in the keeping of his lineal 
descendants. It was incumbent upon those 
who had charge of it to be chaste in thought, 
word, and deed ; but one of the keepers hav- 
ing broken this condition, the Holy Grail dis- 
appeared. From that time it was a favorite 
enterprise of the knights of Arthur's court to 
go in search of it. Sir Galahad was at last 
successful in finding it, as may be read in the 
seventeenth book of the Romance of King 
Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the 
subject of one of the most exquisite of his\ 
poems. 

The plot (if I may give that name to any- 
thing so slight) of the following poem is my 
own, and, to serve its purposes, I have enlarged 
the circle of competition in search of the mira- 
culous cup in such a manner as to include, not 
only other persons than the heroes of the Round 
Table, but also a period of time subsequent to 
the supposed date of King Arthur's reign. 



PRELUDE TO PART FIRST 

Over his keys the musing organist, 

Beginning doubtfully and far away, 
First lets his fingers wander as they list, 

And builds a bridge from Dreamland for 
his lay: 
Then, as the touch of his loved instrument 

Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his 
theme, 
First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent 

Along the wavering vista of his dream. 



Not only around our infancy 
Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; 
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, 
We Sinais climb and know it not. 

Over our manhood bend the skies; 

Against our fallen and traitor lives 
The great winds utter prophecies; 

With our faint hearts the mountain 
strives ; 
Its arms outstretched, the druid wood 

Waits with its benedicite; 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 



107 



And to our age's drowsy blood 
Still shouts the inspiring sea. 

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives 
us; 
The beggar is taxed for a corner to die 
in, 
The priest hath his fee who comes and 
shrives us, 
We bargain for the graves we lie in; 
At the devil's booth are all things sold, 
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of 
gold; 
For a cap and bells our lives we pay, 
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's task- 

ingj ^ - - « ^ . 

/ J»T isjieaven alone thatis-given away,., 
I'T is only God may be had for the as 



ask- 



ing; 



No price is set on the lavish summer; 
June may be had by the poorest comer. 

And what is so rare as a day in June ? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days; / 

Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, V 

And over it softly her warm ear lays; 
Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; 
Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct within it that reaches and 
towers, 
And, groping blindly above it for light, 
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; 
The flush of life may well be seen 

Thrilling back over hills and valleys ; 
The cowslip startles in meadows green, 
The buttercup catches the sun in its 
chalice, 
And there 's never a leaf nor a blade too 
mean 
To be some happy creature's palace; 
The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 
And lets his illumined being o'errun 

With the deluge of summer it receives; 
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters 

and sings; 
He sings to the wide world, and she to her 
nest, — 
' jln the nice ear of Nature which song is the 
best ? 

[Now is the high-tide of the year, 

And whatever of life hath ebbed away 



Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer, 
Into every bare inlet and creek and 
bay; 

Now the heart is so full that a drop over- 
fills it, 

We are happy now because God wills it; 

No matter how barren the past may have 
been, 

'T is enough for us now that the leaves are 
green ; 

We sit in the warm shade and feel right 
well 

How the sap creeps up and the blossoms 
swell; 

We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help 
knowing 

That skies are clear and grass is grow- 
ing; * 

The breeze comes whispering in our ear, 

That dandelions are blossoming near, 
That maize has sprouted, that streams 
are flowing, 

That the river is bluer than the sky, 

That the robin is plastering his house hard 

.by; 

And if the breeze kept the good news 

back, 
For other couriers we should not lack; 
We could guess it all by yon heifer's 
lowing, — 
And hark ! how clear bold chanticleer, 
Warmed with the new wine of the year, 
Tells all in his lusty crowing ! 

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; 
Everything is happy now, 

Everything is upward striving; 
'T is as easy now for the heart to be 

true 
As for grass to be green or skies to be 
blue, — 
'T is the natural way of living: 
Who knows whither the clouds have fled ? 
In the unscarred heaven they leave no 
wake; 
And the eyes forget the tears they have 
shed, 
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; 
The soul partakes the season's youth, 
And the sulphurous rifts of passion and 
woe 
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, 
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. 
What wonder if Sir Launfal now 
Remembered the keeping of his vow ? 



io8 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 



PART FIRST 



" My golden spurs now bring to me, 
And bring to me my richest mail, 

For to-morrow I go over land and sea 
In search of the Holy Grail; 

Shall never a bed for me be spread, 

Nor shall a pillow be under my head, 

Till I begin my vow to keep; 

Here on the rushes will I sleep, 

And perchance there may come a vision 
true 

Ere day create the world anew." 

Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim, 
Slumber fell like a cloud on him, 

And into his soul the vision flew. 



The crows flapped over by twos and threes, 
In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their 

knees, 
The little birds sang as if it were 
The one day of summer in all the year, 
And the very leaves seemed to sing on the 

trees: 
The castle alone in the landscape lay 
Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray: 
'T was the proudest hall in the North 

Countree, 
And never its gates might opened be, 
Save to lord or lady of high degree; 
Summer besieged it on every side, 
But the churlish stone her assaults defied; 
She could not scale the chilly wall, 
Though around it for leagues her pavilions 

tall 
Stretched left and right, 
Over the hills and out of sight; 
Green and broad was every tent, 
And out of each a murmur went 
Till the breeze fell off at night. 



The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, 
And through the dark arch a charger 

sprang, 
Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, 
In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright 
It seemed the dark castle had gathered all 
Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over 

its wall 
In his siege of three hundred summers 

long, 



And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, 
Had cast them forth: so, young and 
strong, 
And lightsome as a locust-leaf, 
Sir Launfal flashed forth in his maiden 

mail, 
To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. 



It was morning on hill and stream and tree, 
And morning in the young knight's 
heart ; 

Only the castle moodily 

Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free, 
And gloomed by itself apart; 

The season brimmed all other things up 

Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup. 



As Sir Launfal made morn through the 
darksome gate, 
He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the 
same, 
Who begged with his hand and moaned as 
he sate; 
And a loathing over Sir Launfal came ; 
The sunshine went out of his soul with a 
thrill, 
The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink 
and crawl, 
And midway its leap his heart stood still 

Like a frozen waterfall; 
For this man, so foul and bent of stature, 
Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, 
And seemed the one blot on the summer 

morn, — 
So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. 

y VI 

The leper raised not the gold from the 

dust: 
" Better to me the poor man's crust, 
Better the blessing of the poor, 
Though I turn me empty from his door; 
That is no true alms which the hand can 

hold; 
He gives only the worthless gold 

Who gives from a sense of duty; 
But he who gives but a slender mite, 
And gives to that which is out of sight, 

That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty 
Which runs through all and doth all 

unite, — 
The hand cannot clasp the whole : 

alms, 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 



109 



The heart outstretches its eager palms, 
For a god goes with it and makes it store 
To the soul that was starving in darkness 
before." 



PRELUDE TO PART SECOND 

Down swept the chill wind from the moun- 
tain peak, 
From the snow five thousand summers 
old; 
On open wold and hilltop bleak 
It had gathered all the cold, 
And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's 

cheek; 
It carried a shiver everywhere 
From the unleafed boughs and pastures 
bare ; 
1 The little brook heard it and built a roof 
'Neath which he could house him, winter- 
proof; 
All night by the white stars' frosty gleams 
He groined his arches and matched his 

beams; 
Slender and clear were his crystal spars 
As the lashes of light that trim the stars : 
He sculptured every summer delight 
In his halls and chambers out of sight; 
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt 
Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 
Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed 

trees 
Bending to counterfeit a breeze; 
Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew 
But silvery mosses that downward grew; 
Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief 
With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf ; 
Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear 
For the gladness of heaven to shine 

through, and here 
He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops 
And hung them thickly with diamond 

drops, 
That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, 
And made a star of every one : 
No mortal builder's most rare device 
Could match this winter-palace of ice; 
'T was as if every image that mirrored lay 
In his depths serene through the summer 

day, 
Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, 
Lest the happy model should be lost, 
Had been mimicked in fairy masonry 
By the elfin builders of the frost. 



Within the hall ^ire song and laughter, 
The cheeks of Christmas glow red and 

And sprouting is every corbel and rafter 

With lightsome green of ivy and holly; 
Through the deep gulf of the chimney 

wide 
Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; 
The broad flame-pennons droop and flap 

And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; 
Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, 

Huuted to death in its galleries blind; 
And swift little troops of silent sparks, 

Now pausing, now scattering away as in 
fear, 
Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks 

Like herds of startled deer. 

But the wind without was eager and sharp, 
Of Sir Launf al's gray hair it makes a harp, 
And rattles and wrings 
The icy strings, 
Singing, in dreary monotone, 
A Christmas carol of its own, 
Whose burden still, as he might guess, 
Was " Shelterless, shelterless, shelter- 
less ! " 
The voice of the seneschal flared like a 

torch 
As he shouted the wanderer away from the 

porch, 
And he sat in the gateway and saw all 
night 
The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, 
Through the window-slits of the castle 
old, 
Build out its piers of ruddy light 
Against the drift of the cold. 

PART SECOND 



There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 
The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; 
The river was dumb and could not speak, 

For the weaver Winter its shroud had 
spun; 
A single crow on the tree-top bleak 

From his shining feathers shed off the 
cold sun; 
Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, 
As if her veins were sapless and old, 
And she rose up decrepitly 
For a last dim look at earth and sea. 



t 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 



Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, 
For another heir in his earldom sate ; 
An old, bent man, worn out and frail, 
He came back from seeking the Holy- 
Grail; 
Little he recked of his earldom's loss, 
No more on his sureoat was blazoned the 

cross, 
But deep in his soul the sign he wore, 
The badge of the suffering and the poor. 



Sir Launfal 's raiment thin and spare 
Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, 
For it was just at the Christmas time; 
So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier elinie, 
And sought for a shelter from cold and 

snow 
In the light and warmth of long-ago; 
He sees the snake-like caravan crawl 
O'er the edge of the desert, black and 

small, 
Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one, 
He can count the camels in the sun, 
As over the red-hot sands they pass 
To where, in its slender necklace of grass, 
The little spring laughed and leapt in the 

shade, 
And with its own self like an infant played, 
And waved its signal of palms. 



" For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms ; " 
The happy camels may reach the spring, 
But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome 

thing, 
The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, 
That cowers beside him, a thing as lone 
And white as the ice -isles of Northern 

seas 
In the desolate horror of his disease. 



And Sir Launfal said, " I behold in thee 
An image of Him who died on the tree ; 
Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns, 
Thou also hast had the world's buffets and 

scorns, 
And to thy life were not denied 
The wounds in the hands and feet and 

side: 
Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; 
Behold, through him, I give to thee ! " 



Then the soul of the leper stood up in his 
eyes 
And looked at Sir Launfal, and straight- 
way he 

Remembered in what a haughtier guise 
He had flung an alms to leprosie, 

When he girt his young life up in gilded 
mail 

And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. 

The heart within him was ashes and dust; 

He parted in twain his single crust, 

He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, 

And gave the leper to eat and drink, 

'T was a mouldy crust of coarse brown 
bread, 
'T was water out of a wooden bowl, — 

Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper 
fed, 
And 't was red wine he drank with his 
thirsty soul. 



As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast 

face, 
A light shone round about the place ; 
The leper no longer crouched at his side,f^ 
But stood before him glorified, 
Shining and tall and fair and straight 
As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful 

Gate, — 
Himself the Gate whereby men can 
Enter the temple of God in Man. 



His words were shed softer than leaves 

from the pine, 
And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on 

the brine, 
That mingle their softness and quiet in one 
With the shaggy unrest they float down 

upon; 
And the voice that was softer than silence 

said, 
" Lo, it is I, be not afraid ! 
In many climes, without avail, 
Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail; 
Behold, it is here, — this cup which thou 
Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now; 
This crust is my body broken for thee, 
This water his blood that died on the tree 



The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 

In whatso we share with another's need; 

Not what we give, but what we share, 






LETTER FROM BOSTON 






For the gift without the giver is bare ; 
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." 

IX 
Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound: 
" The Grail in my castle here is found ! 
Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 
Let it be the spider's banquet-hall; 
He must be fenced with stronger mail 
Who would seek and find the Holy Grail." 

x 
The castle gate stands open now, 

And the wanderer is welcome to the hall 
As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough ; 



No longer scowl the turrets tall, 
The Summer's long siege at last is o'er; >. 
When the first poor outcast went in at the 

door, 
She entered with him in disguise, 
And mastered the fortress by surprise; 
There is no spot she loves so well on 

ground, 
She lingers and smiles there the whole year 

round; 
The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land 
Has hall and bower at his command; 
And there 's no poor man in the North 

Countree 
But is lord of the earldom as much as he. 



LETTER FROM BOSTON 



This letter was written to Mr. James Miller 
McKim, who had succeeded Whittier as editor 



December, 1846. 



Dear M 

By way of saving time, 
I '11 do this letter up in rhyme, 
Whose slim stream through four pages flows 
Ere one is packed with tight-screwed prose, 
Threading the tube of an epistle, 
Smooth as a child's breath through a whistle. 

The great attraction now of all 

Is the " Bazaar " at Faneuil Hall, 

Where swarm the anti- slavery folks 

As thick, dear Miller, as your jokes. 

There 's Garrison, his features very 

Benign for an incendiary, 

Beaming forth sunshine through his glasses 

On the surrounding lads and lasses, 

(No bee could blither be, or brisker,) — 

A Pickwick somehow turned John Ziska, 

His bump of firmness swelling up 

Like a rye cupcake from its cup. 

And there, too, was his English tea-set, 

Which in his ear a kind of flea set 

His Uncle Samuel for its beauty 

Demanding sixty dollars duty, 

('T was natural Sam should serve his trunk 

ill, 
For G., you know, has cut his uncle,) 
Whereas, had he but once made tea in 't, 
His uncle's ear had had the flea in 't, 
There being not a cent of duty 
On any pot that ever drew tea. 

There was Maria Chapman, too, 



of The Pennsylvania Freeman, where the verses 
were first published. 

With her swift eyes of clear steel-blue, 
The coiled-up mainspring of the Fair, 
Originating everywhere 
The expansive force without a sound 
That whirls a hundred wheels around, 
Herself meanwhile as calm and still 
As the bare crown of Prospect Hill; 
A noble woman, brave and apt, 
Cumsean sibyl not more rapt, 
Who might, with those fair tresses shorn, 
The Maid of Orleans' casque have worn, 
Herself the Joan of our Ark, 
For every shaft a shining mark. 

And there, too, was Eliza Follen, 
Who scatters fruit-creating pollen 
Where'er a blossom she can find 
Hardy enough for Truth's north wind, 
Each several point of all her face 
Tremblingly bright with the inward grace, 
As if all motion gave it light 
Like phosphorescent seas at night. 

There jokes our Edmund, plainly son 

Of him who bearded Jefferson, 

A non-resistant by conviction, 

But with a bump in contradiction, 

So that whene'er it gets a chance 

His pen delights to play the lance, 

And — you may doubt it, or believe it — 

Full at the head of Joshua Leavitt 

The very calumet he 'd launch, 

And scourge him with the olive branch. 

A master with the foils of wit, 



LETTER FROM BOSTON 



'T is natural he should love a hit; 

A gentleman, withal, and scholar, 

Only base things excite his choler, 

And then his satire 's keen and thin 

As the lithe blade of Saladin. 

Good letters are a gift apart, 

And his are gems of Flemish art, 

True offspring of the fireside Muse, 

Not a rag-gathering of news 

Like a new hopfield which is all poles, 

But of one blood with Horace Walpole's. 

There, with one hand behind his back, 

Stands Phillips buttoned in a sack, 

Our Attic orator, our Chatham ; 

Old fogies, when he lightens at 'em, 

Shrivel like leaves; to him 't is granted 

Always to say the word that 's wanted, 

So that he seems but speaking clearer 

The tiptop thought of every hearer; 

Each flash his brooding heart lets fall 

Fires what 's combustible in all, 

And sends the applauses bursting in 

Like an exploded magazine. 

His eloquence no frothy show, 

The gutter's street-polluted flow, 

No Mississippi's yellow flood 

Whose shoalness can't be seen for mud; — 

So simply clear, serenely deep, 

So silent-strong its graceful sweep, 

None measures its unrippling force 

Who has not striven to stem its course ; 

How fare their barques who think to play 

With smooth Niagara's mane of spray, 

Let Austin's total shipwreck say. 

He never spoke a word too much — 

Except of Story, or some such, 

Whom, though condemned by ethics strict, 

The heart refuses to convict. 

Beyond, a crater in each eye, 
Sways brown, broad-shouldered Pills- 
bury, 
Who tears up words like trees by the roots, 
A Theseus in stout cow-hide boots, 
The wager of eternal war 
Against that loathsome Minotaur 
To whom we sacrifice each year 
The best blood of our Athens here, 
(Dear M., pray brush up your Lempriere.) 
A terrible denouncer he, 
Old Sinai burns unquenchably 
Upon his lips ; he well might be a 
Hot-blazing soul from fierce Judea, 
Habakkuk, Ezra, or Hosea. 



His words are red hot iron searers, 
And nightmare-like he mounts his hearers, 
Spurring them like avenging Fate, or 
As Waterton his alligator. 

Hard by, as calm as summer even, 

Smiles the reviled and pelted Stephen, 

The unappeasable Boanerges 

To all the Churches and the Clergies, 

The grim savant who, to complete 

His own peculiar cabinet, 

Contrived to label 'mong his kicks 

One from the followers of Hicks; 

Who studied mineralogy 

Not with soft book upon the knee, 

But learned the properties of stones 

By contact sharp of flesh and bones, 

And made the experimentum crucis 

With his own body's vital juices; 

A man with caoutchouc endurance, 

A perfect gem for life insurance, 

A kind of maddened John the Baptist, 

To whom the harshest word comes aptest, 

Who, struck by stone or brick ill-starred, 

Hurls back an epithet as hard, 

Which, deadlier than stone or brick, 

Has a propensity to stick. 

His oratory is like the scream 

Of the iron-horse's frenzied steam 

Which warns the world to leave wide space 

For the black engine's swerveless race. 

Ye men with neckcloths white, I warn 

you — 
Habet a whole haymow in cornu. 

A Judith, there, turned Quakeress, 

Sits Abby in her modest dress, 

Serving a table quietly, 

As if that mild and downcast eye 

Flashed never, with its scorn intense, 

More than Medea's eloquence. 

So the same force which shakes its dread 

Far-blazing blocks o'er ^Etna's head, 

Along the wires in silence fares 

And messages of commerce bears. 

No nobler gift? of heart and brain, 

No life more white from spot or stain, 

Was e'er on Freedom's altar laid 

Than hers, the simple Quaker maid. 



These last three (leaving in the lurch 
Some other themes) assault the Church, 
Who therefore writes them in her lists 
As Satan's limbs and atheists; 
For each sect has one argument 



il 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



IJ 3 



Whereby the rest to hell are sent, 
Which serve them like the Graise's tooth, 
Massed round in turn from mouth to 

mouth; — 
If any ism should arise, 
Then look on it with constable's eyes, 
Tie round its neck a heavy athe-, 
And give it kittens' hydropathy. 
This trick with other (useful very) tricks 
Is laid to the Babylonian meretrix, 
But 't was in vogue before her day 
Wherever priesthoods had their way, 
And Buddha's Popes with this struck dumb 
The followers of Fi and Fum. 

Well, if the world, with prudent fear 
Pay God a seventh of the year, 
And as a Farmer, who would pack 
All his religion in one stack, 
For this world works six days in seven 
And idles on the seventh for Heaven, 
Expecting, for his Sunday's sowing, 
In the next world to go a-mowing 
The crop of all his meeting-going; — 
If the poor Church, by power enticed, 
Finds none so infidel as Christ, 



Quite backward reads his Gospel meek, 
(As 't were in Hebrew writ, not Greek,) 
Fencing the gallows and the sword 
With conscripts drafted from his word, 
And makes one gate of Heaven so wide 
That the rich orthodox might ride 
Through on their camels, while the poor 
Squirm through the scant, unyielding door, 
Which, of the Gospel's straitest size, 
Is narrower than bead-needles' eyes, 
What wonder World and Church should 

call 
The true faith atheistical ? 

Yet, after all, 'twixt you and me, 
Dear Miller, I could never see 
That Sin's and Error's ugly smirch 
Stained the walls only of the Church; 
There are good priests, and men who take 
Freedom's torn cloak for lucre's sake; 
I can't believe the Church so strong, 
As some men do, for Right or Wrong. 
But, for this subject (long and vext) 
I must refer you to my next, 
As also for a list exact 
Of goods with which the Hall was packed. 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



In a Prefatory Note which Mr. Lowell pre- 
fixed to a later issue of this poem, the history 
of its inception and publication is thus briefly 
told : " This jeu d' esprit was extemporized, I 
may fairly say, so rapidly was it written, 
purely for my own amusement and with no 
thought of publication. I sent daily instal- 
ments of it to a friend in New York, the late 
Charles F. Briggs. He urged me to let it be 
printed, and I at last consented to its anony- 
mous publication. The secret was kept till 
after several persons had laid claim to its 
authorship." In the Letters it is possible to get 
a closer view of the author at work. In a letter 
to Mr. Briggs, written November 13, 1847, he 
says: "My satire remains just as it was. 
About six hundred lines I think are written. 
I left it because I wished to finish it in one 
mood of mind, and not to get that and my 
serious poems in the new volume entangled. 
It is a rambling, disjointed affair, and I may 
alter the form of it, but if I can get it read, I 
know it will take. I intend to give it some 
serial title and continue it at intervals." On 
the last day of the same year, he writes to his 



correspondent : "I have been hard at work 
copying my satire, that I might get it (what was 
finished of it, at least) to you by New- Year's 
Day as a present. As it is, I can only send 
the first part. It was all written with one im- 
pulse and was the work of not a great many 
hours, but it was written in good spirits (con 
amore, as Leupp said he used to smoke), and 
therefore seems to me to have a hearty and 
easy swing about it that is pleasant. But I 
was interrupted midway by being obliged to 
get ready the copy for my volume, and I have 
never been able to weld my present mood upon 
the old one without making an ugly swelling 
at the joint. 

" I wish you to understand that I make you a 
New Year's gift, not of the manuscript, but of 
the thing itself. I wish you to get it printed 
(if you think the sale will warrant it) for your 
own benefit. At the same time I am desirous 
of retaining my copyright, in order that, if cir- 
cumstances render it desirable, I may still pos- 
sess a control over it. Therefore, if you think 
it would repay publishing (I have no doubt of 
it, or I should not offer it to you) I wish you 



H4 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



would enter the copyright in your own name, 
and then make a transfer to me in ' considera- 
tion of,' etc. 

" I am making as particular directions as if 
I were drawing my will, but I have a sort of 
presentiment (which I never had in regard to 
anything else) that this little hit of pleasantry 
will take. Perhaps I have said too much of 
the Centurion. But it was only the comical- 
ity of his character that attracted me — for the 
man himself personally never entered my head. 
But the sketch is clever ? " 

Again under date of March 26, 1848 : " Since 
I sent you the first half, I have written some- 
thing about Willis and about Longfellow — 
and I am waiting for pleasanter weather in 
order to finish it. I want to get my windows 
open and to write in the fresh air. I ought 
not to have sent you any part of it till I had 
finished it entirely. I feel a sense of respon- 
sibility which hinders my pen from running 
along as it ought in such a theme. I wish the 
last half to be as jolly and unconstrained as 
the first. If you had not praised what I sent 
you, I dare say you would have had the whole 
of it ere this. Praise is the only thing that 
can make me feel any doubt of myself." Six 



weeks later he wrote, May 12 : " When I can 
sit at my open window and my friendly leaves 
hold their hands before my eyes to prevent 
their wandering to the landscape, I can sit 
down and write. I have begun upon the 
Fable again fairly, and am making some head- 
way. I think with what I sent you (which I 
believe was about five hundred lines) it will 
make something over a thousand. I have 
done, since I sent the first half, Willis, Long- 
fellow, Bryant, Miss Fuller, and Mrs. Child. 
In Longfellow's ease I bave attempted no char- 
acterization. The same (in a degree) may be 
said of S. M. F. With her I have been perfectly 
good-humored, but I have a fancy that what 
I say will stick uncomfortably. It will make 
you laugh. So will L. M. C. After S. M. F. 
I make a short digression on bores in general, 
which has some drollery. Willis I think good. 
Bryant is funny, and as fair as I could make it, 
immitigably just. Indeed I have endeavored 
to be so in all." 

The volume was affectionately inscribed to 
Charles F. Briggs, and furnished with the fol- 
lowing rhymed title page and preliminary note, 
a second note being prefixed to a second edi- 
tion. 



Reader ! walk up at once (it will soon be too late), 
and buy at a perfectly ruinous rate 

A FABLE FOR CRITICS: 

OK, BETTER, 

(I LIKE, AS A THING THAT THE READER'S FIRST FANCY MAT 

STRIKE, AN OLD-FASHIONED TITLE-PAGE, SUCH 
AS PRESENTS A TABULAR VIEW OF THE VOLUME'S CONTENTS), 

A GLANCE AT A FEW OF OUR LIT- 
ERARY PROGENIES 

(MRS. MALAPROP'S WORD) 

FROM THE TUB OF DIOGENES ; 
A VOCAL AND MUSICAL MEDLEY, 

THAT IS, 

A SERIES OF JOKES 

%v % fBffnbtrfirf <Qui3, 

WHO ACCOMPANIES HIMSELF WITH A RUB-A-DUB-DUB, FULL 
OF SPntIT AND GRACE, ON THE TOP OF THE TUB. 

Set forth in October, the Zlst day, 
In the year '48, G. P. Putnam, Broadway. 



It being the commonest mode of proced- 
ure, I premise a few candid remarks 

To the Reader : — 

This trifle, begun to please only myself 
and my own private fancy, was laid on the 
shelf. But some friends, who had seen it, 
induced me, by dint of saying they liked it, 
to put it in print. That is, having come 
to that very conclusion, I asked their advice 
when 't would make no confusion. For 
though (in the gentlest of ways) they had 
hinted it was scarce worth the while, I 
should doubtless have printed it. 

I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, 
slender thing, rhyme-ywinged, with a sting- 
in its tail. But, by ad dings and alterings 
not previously planned, digressions chance- 
hatched, like birds' eggs in the sand, and 
dawdlings to suit every whimsey's demand 
(always freeing the bird which I held in 
my hand, for the two perched, perhaps out 
of reach, in the tree), — it grew by degrees 
to the size which you see. I was like the 
old woman that carried the calf, and my 
neighbors, like hers, no doubt, wonder and 
laugh; and when, my strained arms with 
their grown burthen full, I call it my Fable, 
they call it a bull. 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



JI 5 



Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as 
that goes) in a style that is neither good 
verse nor bad prose, and being a person 
■whom nobody knows, some people will say 
I am rather more free with my readers 
than it is becoming to be, that I seem to 
expect them to wait on my leisure in fol- 
lowing wherever I wander at pleasure, 
that, in short, I take more than a young 
author's lawful ease, and laugh in a queer 
way so like Mephistopheles, that the Pub- 
lic will doubt, as they grope through my 
rhythm, if in truth I am making fun of 
them or with them. 

So the excellent Public is hereby assured 
that the sale of my book is already secured. 
For there is not a poet throughout the 
whole land but will purchase a copy or two 
out of hand, in the fond expectation of 
being amused in it, by seeing his betters 
cut up and abused in it. Now, I find, by a 
pretty exact calculation, there are some- 
thing like ten thousand bards in the nation, 
of that special variety whom the Review 
and Magazine critics call lofty and true, and 
about thirty thousand (this tribe is increas- 
ing) of the kinds who are termed full of 
promise and pleasing. The Public will see 
by a glance at this schedule, that they can- 
not expect me to be over-sedulous about 
courting them, since it seems I have got 
enough fuel made sure of for boiling my 
pot. 

As for such of our poets as find not 
their names mentioned once in my pages, 
with praises or blames, let them send in 
their cards, without further delay, to 
my friend G. P. Putnam, Esquire, in 
Broadway, where a list will be kept with 
the strictest regard to the day and the hour 
of receiving the card. Then, taking them 
up as I chance to have time (that is, if 
their names can be twisted in rhyme), I 
will honestly give each his proper posi- 
tion, at the rate of one author to each 
new edition. Thus a PREMIUM is of- 
fered sufficiently high (as the magazines 
say when they tell their best lie) to induce 
bards to club their resources and buy the 
balance of every edition, until they have all 
of them fairly been run through the mill. 

One word to such readers (judicious and 
wise) as read books with something behind 
the mere eyes, of whom in the country, 
perhaps, there are two, including myself, 



gentle reader, and you. All the characters 
sketched in this slight jeu d' esprit, though, 
it may be, they seem, here and there, 
rather free, and drawn from a somewhat 
too cynical standpoint, are meant to be 
faithful, for that is the grand point, and 
none but an owl would feel sore at a rub 
from a jester who tells you, without any 
subterfuge, that he sits in Diogenes' tub. 



A PRELIMINARY NOTE TO THE 
SECOND EDITION, 

though it well may be reckoned, of all 
composition, the species at once most de- 
lightful and healthy, is a thing which an 
author, unless he be wealthy and willing to 
pay for that kind of delight, is not, in all 
instances, called on to write, though there 
are, it is said, who, their spirits to cheer, 
slip in a new title-page three times a year, 
and in this way snuff up an imaginary 
savor of that sweetest of dishes, the popu- 
lar favor, — much as if a starved painter 
should fall to and treat the Ugolino inside 
to a picture of meat. 

You remember (if not, pray turn back- 
ward and look) that, in writing the preface 
which ushered my book, I treated you, ex- 
cellent Public, not merely with a cool dis- 
regard, but downright cavalierly. Now I 
would not take back the least thing I then 
said, though I thereby could butter both 
sides of my bread, for I never could see 
that an author owed aught to the people 
he solaced, diverted, or taught ; and, as for 
mere fame, I have long ago learned that 
the persons by whom it is finally earned 
are those with whom your verdict weighed 
not a pin, unsustained by the higher court 
sitting within. 

But I wander from what I intended to 
say, — that you have, namely, shown such 
a liberal way of thinking, and so much 
gesthetic perception of anonymous worth in 
the handsome reception you gave to my 
book, spite of some private piques (having 
bought the first thousand in barely two 
weeks), that I think, past a doubt, if you 
measured the phiz of yours most devotedly, 
Wonderful Quiz, you would find that its 
vertical section was shorter, by an inch and 
two tenths, or 'twixt that and a quarter. 

You have watched a child playing — in 



n6 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



those wondrous years when belief is not 
bound to the eyes and the ears, and the 
vision divine is so clear and unmarred, 
that each baker of pies in the dirt is a 
bard ? Give a knife and a shingle, he fits 
out a fleet, and, on that little mud-puddle 
over the street, his fancy, in purest good 
faith, will make sail round the globe with 
a puff of his breath for a gale, will visit, 
in barely ten minutes, all climes, and do 
the Columbus-feat hundreds of times. Or, 
suppose the young poet fresh stored with 
delights from that Bible of childhood, the 
Arabian Nights, he will turn to a crony 
and cry, " Jack, let 's play that I am a 
Genius ! " Jacky straightway makes 
Aladdin's lamp out of a stone, and, for 
hours, they enjoy each his own super- 
natural powers. This is all very pretty 
and pleasant, but then suppose our two 
urchins have grown into men, and both 
have turned authors, — one says to his 
brother, " Let 's play we 're the American 
somethings or other, — say Homer or 
Sophocles, Goethe or Scott (only let them 
be big enough, no matter what). Come, 
you shall be Byron or Pope, which you 
choose: I '11 be Coleridge, and both shall 
write mutual reviews." So they both (as 
mere strangers) before many days send 
each other a cord of anonymous bays. 
Each, piling his epithets, smiles in his 
sleeve to see what his friend can be made 
to believe; each, reading the other's un- 
biased review, thinks — Here 's pretty high 
praise, but no more than my due. Well, 
we laugh at them both, and yet make no 
great fuss when the same farce is acted to 
benefit us. Even I, who, if asked, scarce 
a month since, what Fudge meant, should 
have answered, the dear Public's critical 
judgment, begin to think sharp-witted 
Horace spoke sooth when he said that the 
Public sometimes hit the truth. 

In reading these lines, you perhaps have 
a vision of a person in pretty good health 
and condition ; and yet, since I put forth 
my primary edition, I have been crushed, 
scorched, withered, used up and put down 
(by Smith with the cordial assistance of 
Brown), in all, if you put any faith in my 
rhymes, to the number of ninety-five several 
times, and, while I am writing, — I tremble 
to think of it, for I may at this moment be 
just on the brink of it, — Molybdostom, 



angry at being omitted, has begun a crit- 
ique, — am I not to be pitied ? 1 

Now I shall not crush them since, indeed, 
for that matter, no pressure I know of 
could render them flatter ; nor wither, nor 
scorch them, — no action of fire could 
make either them or their articles drier ; 
nor waste time in putting them down — 
I am thinking not their own self-inflation 
will keep them from sinking ; for there 's 
this contradiction about the whole bevy, — 
though without the least weight, they are 
awfully heavy. No, my dear honest bore, 
surdo fdbulam narras, they are no more to 
me than a rat in the arras. I can walk 
with the Doctor, get facts from the Don, 
or draw out the Lambish quintessence of 
John, and feel nothing more than a half- 
comic sorrow, to think that they all will 
be lying to-morrow tossed carelessly up on 
the waste-paper shelves, and forgotten by 
all but their half-dozen selves. Once snug 
in my attic, my fire in a roar, I leave 
the whole pack of them outside the door. 
With Hakluyt or Purchas I wander away 
to the black northern seas or barbaric Ca- 
thay ; get fou with O'Shanter, and sober 
me then with that builder of brick-kilnish 
dramas, rare Ben ; snuff Herbert, as holy 
as a flower on a grave ; with Fletcher wax 
tender, o'er Chapman grow brave : with 
Marlowe or Kyd take a fine poet-rave ; in 
Very, most Hebrew of Saxons, find peace ; 
with Lycidas welter on vext Irish seas ; 
with Webster grow wild, and climb earth- 
ward again, down by mystical Browne's 
Jacob's-ladder-like brain, to that spiritual 
Pepys (Cotton's version) Montaigne ; find 
a new depth in Wordsworth, undreamed 
of before, that marvel, a poet divine who 
can bore. Or, out of my study, the scholar 
thrown off, Nature holds up her shield 
'gainst the sneer and the scoff ; the land- 
scape, forever consoling and kind, pours 
her wine and her oil on the smarts of the 
mind. The waterfall, scattering its vanish- 
ing gems ; the tall grove of hemlocks, with 
moss on their stems, like plashes of sun- 
light ; the pond in the woods, where no 
foot but mine and the bittern's intrudes, 
where pitcher-plants purple and gentians 

1 The wise Scandinavians probably called their bards 
by the queer-looking title of Scald in a delicate way, as 
it were, just to hint to the world the hot water they 
always get into. 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



117 



hard by recall to September the blue of 
June's sky; these are all my kind neigh- 
bors, and leave me no wish to say aught to 
you all, my poor critics, but — pish ! I 've 
buried the hatchet : I 'm twisting an allu- 
mette out of one of you now, and relight- 
ing my calumet. In your private capaci- 
ties, come when you please, I will give you 
my hand and a fresh pipe apiece. 

As I ran through the leaves of my poor 
little book, to take a fond author's first 
tremulous look, it was quite an excitement 
to hunt the errata, sprawled in as birds' 
tracks are in some kinds of strata (only 
these made things crookeder). Fancy an 
heir that a father had seen born well- 
featured and fair, turning suddenly wry- 
nosed, club-footed, squint-eyed, hair-lipped, 
wapper-jawed, carrot-haired, from a pride 
become an aversion, — my case was yet 
worse. A club-foot (by way of a change) 
in a verse, I might have forgiven, an o's 
being wry, a limp in an e, or a cock in an 
i, — but to have the sweet babe of my 
brain served in pi! I am not queasy- 
stomached, but such a Thyestean banquet 
as that was quite out of the question. 

In the edition now issued no pains are 
neglected, and my verses, as orators say, 
stand corrected. Yet some blunders re- 
main of the Public's own make, which I 
wish to correct for my personal sake. For 
instance, a character drawn in pure fun 
and condensing the traits of a dozen in one, 
has been, as I hear, by some persons ap- 
plied to a good friend of mine, whom to 
stab in the side, as we walked along chat- 
ting and joking together, would not be my 
way. I can hardly tell whether a question 
will ever arise in which he and I should by 
any strange fortune agree, but meanwhile 
my esteem for him grows as I know him, 
and, though not the best judge on earth of 
a poem, he knows what it is he is saying 
and why, and is honest and fearless, two 
good points which I have not found so rife 
I can easily smother my love for them, 
whether on my side or t' other. 

For my other anonymi, you may be sure 
that I know what is meant by a caricature, 
and what by a portrait. There are those 
who think it is capital fun to be spattering 
their ink on quiet, unquarrelsome folk, but 
the minute the game changes sides and the 
others begin it, they see something savage 



and horrible in it. As for me I respect 
neither women nor men for their gender, 
nor own any sex in a pen. I choose just 
to hint to some causeless unfriends that, as 
far as I know, there are always two ends 
(and one of them heaviest, too) to a staff, 
and two parties also to every good laugh. 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel- 
tree's shade, 
Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was 

made, 
For the god being one day too warm in his 

wooing, 
She took to the tree to escape his pursuing; 
Be the cause what it might, from his offers 

she shrunk, 
And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a 

trunk ; 
And, though 't was a step into which he 

had driven her, 
He somehow or other had never forgiven 

her; 
Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic, 
Something bitter to chew when he 'd play 

the Byronic, 
And I can't count the obstinate nymphs 

that he brought over 
By a strange kind of smile he pufc on when 

he thought of her. 
" My case is like Dido's," he sometimes re- 
marked ; 
" When I last saw my love, she was fairly 

embarked 
In a laurel, as she thought — but (ah, how 

Fate mocks !) 
She has found it by this time a very bad 

box; 
Let hunters from me take this saw when 

they need it, — 
You 're not always sure of your game when 

you 've treed it. 
Just conceive such a change taking place 

in one's mistress ! 
What romance would be left ? — who can 

flatter or kiss trees ? 
And, for mercy's sake, how could one keep 

up a dialogue 
With a dull wooden thing that will live 

and will die a log, — 
Not to say that the thought would forever 

intrude 



n8 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



That you 've less chance to win her the 

more she is wood ? 
Ah ! it went to my heart, and the memory 

still grieves, 
To see those loved graces all taking their 



Those charms beyond speech, so enchanting 

but now, 
As they left me forever, each making its 

bough ! 
If her tongue had a tang sometimes more 

than was right, 
Her new bark is worse than ten times her 

old bite." 

Now, Daphne — before she was happily 

treeified — 
Over all other blossoms the lily had deified, 
And when she expected the god on a visit 
('T was before he had made his intentions 

explicit), 
Some buds she arranged with a vast deal 

of care, 
To look as if artlessly twined in her hair, 
Where they seemed, as he said, when he 

paid his addresses, 
Like the day breaking through the long 

night of her tresses; 
So whenever he wished to be quite irresisti- 
ble, 
Like a man with eight trumps in his hand 

at a whist-table 
(I feared me at first that the rhyme was 

untwistable, 
Though I might have lugged in an allusion 

to Cristabel), — 
He would take up a lily, and gloomily look 

in it, 
As I shall at the , when they cut up 

my book in it. 

Well, here, after all the bad rhyme I 've 
been spinning, 

I 've got back at last to my story's begin- 
ning: 

Sitting there, as I say, in the shade of his 
mistress, 

As dull as a volume of old Chester myster- 
ies, 

Or as those puzzling specimens which, in 
old histories, 

We read of his verses — the Oracles, 
namely, — 

(I wonder the Greeks should have swal- 
lowed them tamely, 



For one might bet safely whatever he has 
to risk, 

They were laid at his door by some ancient 
Miss Asterisk, 

And so dull that the men who retailed 
them out-doors 

Got the ill name of augurs, because they 
were bores, — ) 

First, he mused what the animal substance 
or herb is 

Would induce a mustache, for you know 
he 's imberbis ; 

Then he shuddered to think how his youth- 
ful position 

Was assailed by the age of his son the 
physician ; 

At some poems he glanced, had been sent 
to him lately, 

And the metre and sentiment puzzled him 
greatly; 

" Mehercle ! I 'd make such proceeding 
felonious, — 

Have they all of them slept in the cave of 
Trophonius ? 

Look well to your seat, 't is like taking an 
airing 

On a corduroy road, and that out of repair- 
ing; 

It leads one, 't is true, through the primi- 
tive forest, 

Grand natural features, but then one has 
no rest; 

You just catch a glimpse of some ravish- 
ing distance, 

When a jolt puts the whole of it out of ex- 
istence, — 

Why not use their ears, if they happen to 
have any ? " 

— Here the laurel-leaves murmured the 
name of poor Daphne. 

" Oh, weep with me, Daphne," he sighed, 

"for you know it 's 
A terrible thing to be pestered with po- 
ets ! 
But, alas, she is dumb, and the proverb 

holds good, 
She never will cry till she 's out of the 

wood ! 
What would n't I give if I never had 

known of her ? 
'T were a kind of relief had I something 

to groan over: 
If I had but some letters of hers, now, to 

toss over, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



119 



I might turn for the nonce a Byronic phi- 
losopher, 

And bewitch all the flats by bemoaning the 
loss of her. 

One needs something tangible, though, to 
begin on, — 

A loom, as it were, for the fancy to spin 
on; 

What boots all your grist ? it can never be 
ground 

Till a breeze makes the arms of the wind- 
mill go round; 

(Or, if 't is a water-mill, alter the meta- 
phor, 

And say it won't stir, save the wheel be 
well wet afore, 

Or lug in some stuff about water ' so 
dreamily,' — 

It is not a metaphor, though, 't is a sim- 
ile) ; 

A lily, perhaps, would set my mill a-going, 

For just at this season, I think, they are 
blowing. 

Here, somebody, fetch one; not very far 
hence 

They 're in bloom by the score, 't is but 
climbing a fence; 

There 's a poet hard by, who does nothing 
but till his 

Whole garden, from one end to t' other, 
with lilies; 

A very good plan, were it not for satiety, 

One longs for a weed here and there, for 
variety; 

Though a weed is no more than a flower in 
disguise, 

Which is seen through at once, if love give 
a man eyes." 

Now there happened to be among Phce- 

bus's followers, 
A gentleman, one of the omnivorous swal- 

lowers, 
Who bolt every book that comes out of 

the press, 
Without the least question of larger or 

less, 
Whose stomachs are strong at the expense 

of their head, — 
For reading new books is like eating new 

bread, 
One can bear it at first, but by gradual 

steps he 
Is brought to death's door of a mental 

dyspepsy. 



On a previous stage of existence, our 

Hero 
Had ridden outside, with the glass below 

zero; 
He had been, 't is a fact you may safely 

rely on, 
Of a very old stock a most eminent 

scion, — 
A stock all fresh quacks their fierce boluses 

ply on, 
Who stretch the new boots Earth 's unwill- 
ing to try on, 
Whom humbugs of all shapes and sorts 

keep their eye on, 
Whose hair 's in the mortar of every new 

Zion, 
Who, when whistles are dear, go directly 

and buy one, 
Who think slavery a crime that we must 

not say fie on, 
Who hunt, if they e'er hunt at all, with the 

lion 
(Though they hunt lions also, whenever 

they spy one), 
Who contrive to make every good fortune 

a wry one, 
And at last choose the hard bed of honor 

to die on, 
Whose pedigree, traced to earth's earliest 

years, 
Is longer than anything else but their 

ears ; — 
In short, he was sent into life with the 

wrong key, 
He unlocked the door, and stept forth a 

poor donkey. 
Though kicked and abused by his bipedal 

betters 
Yet he filled no mean place in the kingdom 

of letters; 
Far happier than many a literary hack, 
He bore only paper-mill rags on his 

back 
(For it makes a vast difference which side 

the mill 
One expends on the paper his labor and 

skill); 
So, when his soul waited a new transmi- 
gration, 
And Destiny balanced 'twixt this and that 

station, 
Not having much time to expend upon 

bothers, 
Remembering he 'd had some connection 

with authors, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



And considering his four legs had grown 

paralytic, — 
She set him on two, and he came forth a 

critic. 

Through his babyhood no kind of pleas- 
ure he took 
In any amusement but tearing a book; 
For him there was no intermediate stage 
From babyhood up to straight-laced mid- 
dle age; 
There were years when he did n't wear 

coat-tails behind, 
But a boy he could never be rightly de- 
fined; 
Like the Irish Good Folk, though in length 

scarce a span, 
From the womb he came gravely, a little 

old man; 
While other boys' trousers demanded the 

toil 
Of the motherly fingers on all kinds of 

soil, 
Red, yellow, brown, black, clayey, gravelly, 

loamy, 
He sat in the corner and read Viri Romse. 
He never was known to unbend or to revel 

once 
In base, marbles, hockey, or kick up the 

devil once; 
He was just one of those who excite the 

benevolence 
Of your old prigs who sound the soul's 

depths with a ledger, 
And are on the lookout for some young 

men to " edger- 
cate," as they call it, who won't be too 

costly, 
And who '11 afterward take to the ministry 

mostly; 
Who always wear spectacles, always look 

bilious, 
Always keep on good terms with each 

mater-familias 
Throughout the whole parish, and manage 

to rear 
Ten boys like themselves, on four hundred 

a year: 
Who, fulfilling in turn the same fearful 

conditions, 
Either preach through their noses, or go 

upon missions. 

In this way our Hero got safely to col- 
lege, 



Where he bolted alike both his commons 

and knowledge; 
A reading-machine, always wound up and 

going, 
He mastered whatever was not worth the 

knowing, 
Appeared in a gown, with black waistcoat 

of satin, 
To spout such a Gothic oration in Latin 
That Tully could never have made out a 

word in it 
(Though himself was the model the author 

preferred in it), 
And grasping the parchment which gave 

him in fee 
All the mystic and-so-forths contained in 

A. B., 
He was launched (life is always compared 

to a sea) 
With just enough learning, and skill for 

the using it, 
To prove he 'd a brain, by forever confus- 
ing it. 
So worthy St. Benedict, piously burning 
With the holiest zeal against secular learn- 

. in £' 
Nesciensque scienter, as writers express it, 

Indoctusque sapienter a Roma recessit. 

'T would be endless to tell you the 
things that he knew, 

Each a separate fact, undeniably true, 

But with him or each other they 'd nothing 
to do; 

No power of combining, arranging, dis- 
cerning, 

Digested the masses he learned into learn- 
ing; 

There was one thing in life he had practical 
knowledge for 

(And this, you will think, he need scarce 
go to college for), — 

Not a deed would he do, nor a word would 
he utter, 

Till he 'd weighed its relations to plain 
bread and butter. 

When he left Alma Mater, he practised his 
wits 

In compiling the journals' historical bits, — 

Of shops broken open, men falling in 
fits, 

Great fortunes in England bequeathed to 
poor printers, 

And cold spells, the coldest for many past 
winters, — 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



Then, rising by industry, knack, and ad- 
dress, 

Got notices up for an unbiased press, 

With a mind so well poised, it seemed 
equally made for 

Applause or abuse, just which chanced to 
be paid for: 

From this point his progress was rapid and 
sure, 

To the post of a regular heavy reviewer. 

And here I must say he wrote excellent 

articles 
On Hebraical points, or the force of Greek 

particles ; 
They filled up the space nothing else was 

prepared for, 
And nobody read that which nobody cared 

for; 
If any old book reached a fiftieth edition, 
He could fill forty pages with safe erudi- 
tion: 
He could gauge the old books by the old 

set of rules, 
And his very old nothings pleased very old 

fools ; 
But give him a new book, fresh out of the 

heart, 
And you put him at sea without compass 

or chart, — 
His blunders aspired to the rank of an art; 
For his lore was engraft, something foreign 

that grew in him, 
Exhausting the sap of the native and true 

in him, 
So that when a man came with a soul that 

was new in him, 
Carving new forms of truth out of Nature's 

old granite, 
New and old at their birth, like Le Ver- 

rier's planet, 
Which, to get a true judgment, themselves 

must create 
In the soul of their critic the measure and 

weight, 
Being rather themselves a fresh standard 

of grace, 
To compute their own judge, and assign 

him his place, 
Our reviewer would crawl all about it and 

round it, 
And, reporting each circumstance just as 

he found it, 
Without the least malice, — his record 

would be 



Profoundly aesthetic as that of a flea, 
Which, supping on Wordsworth, should 

print, for our sakes, 
Recollections of nights with the Bard of 

the Lakes, 
Or, lodged by an Arab guide, ventured to 

render a 
Comprehensive account of the ruins at 

Denderah. 

As I said, he was never precisely unkind, 

The defect in his brain was just absence of 
mind; 

If he boasted, 't was simply that he was 
self-made, 

A position which I, for one, never gain- 
said, 

My respect for my Maker supposing a skill 

In his works which our Hero would an- 
swer but ill; 

And I trust that the mould which he used 
may be cracked, or he, 

Made bold by success, may enlarge his 
phylactery, 

And set up a kind of a man-manufactory, — 

An event which I shudder to think about, 
seeing 

That Man is a moral, accountable being. 

He meant well enough, but was still in 

the way, 
As dunces still are, let them be where they 

may; 
Indeed, they appear to come into exist- 
ence 
To impede other folks with their awkward 

assistance ; 
If you set up a dunce on the very North 

pole 
All alone with himself, I believe, on my 

soul, 
He 'd manage to get betwixt somebody's 

shins, 
And pitch him down bodily, all in his sins, 
To the grave polar bears sitting round on 

the ice, 
All shortening their grace, to be in for a 

slice; 
Or, if he found nobody else there to pother, 
Why, one of his legs would just trip up the 

other, 
For there 's nothing we read of in torture's 

inventions, 
Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best 

of intentions. 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



A terrible fellow to meet in society, 
Not the toast that he buttered was ever so 

dry at tea; 
There he 'd sit at the table and stir in his 

sugar, 
Crouching close for a spring, all the while, 

like a cougar; 
Be sure of your facts, of your measures 

and weights, 
Of your time, — he 's as fond as an Arab of 

dates ; 
You '11 be telling, perhaps, in your comical 

way, 
Of something you 've seen in the course of 

the day ; 
And, just as you 're tapering out the con- 
clusion, 
You venture an ill-fated classic allusion, — 
The girls have all got their laughs ready, 

when, whack ! 
The cougar comes down on your thunder- 
struck back ! 
You had left out a comma, — your Greek's 

put in joint, 
And pointed at cost of your story's whole 

point. 
In the course of the evening, you find 

chance for certain 
Soft speeches to Anne, in the shade of the 

curtain: 
You tell her your heart can be likened to 

one flower, 
" And that, O most charming of women, 's 

the sunflower, 
Which turns " — here a clear nasal voice, 

to your terror, 
From outside the curtain, says, " That's all 

an error." 
As for him, he 's — no matter, he never 

grew tender. 
Sitting after a ball, with his feet on the 

fender, 
Shaping somebody's sweet features out of 

cigar smoke 
(Though he 'd willingly grant you that 

such doings are smoke) ; 
All women he damns with mutabile semper, 
And if ever he felt something like love's 

distemper, 
*T was tow'rds a young lady who spoke 

ancient Mexican, 
And assisted her father in making a lexi- 
con; 
Though I recollect hearing him get quite 

ferocious 



About Mary Clausum, the mistress of Gro- 

tius, 
Or something of that sort, — but, no more 

to bore ye 
With character-painting, I '11 turn to my 

story. 

Now, Apollo, who finds it convenient 

sometimes 
To get his court clear of the makers of 

rhymes, 
The genus, I think it is called, irritabile, 
Every one of whom thinks himself treated 

most shabbily, 
And nurses a — what is it ? — immedicabile, 
Which keeps him at boiling-point, hot for a 

quarrel, 
As bitter as wormwood, and sourer than 

sorrel, 
If any poor devil but look at a laurel; — 
Apollo, I say, being sick of their rioting 
(Though he sometimes acknowledged their 

verse had a quieting 
Effect after dinner, and seemed to sug- 



Retreat to the shrine of a tranquil siesta), 

Kept our Hero at hand, who, by means of 
a bray, 

Which he gave to the life, drove the rabble 
away; 

And if that would n't do, he was sure to 
succeed, 

If he took his review out and offered to 
read; 

Or, failing in plans of this milder descrip- 
tion, 

He would ask for their aid to get up a 
subscription, 

Considering that authorship was n't a rich 
craft, 

To print the " American drama of Witch- 
craft." 

" Stay, I '11 read you a scene," — but he 
hardly began, 

Ere Apollo shrieked " Help ! " and th< 
authors all ran: 

And once, when these purgatives acted 
with less spirit, 

And the desperate case asked a remedy 
desperate, 

He drew from his pocket a foolscap epistle 

As calmly as if 't were a nine-barrelled 
pistol, 

And threatened them all with the judg- 
ment to come, 



• 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



123 



Of "A wandering Star's first impressions 

of Rome." 
" Stop ! stop ! " with their hands o'er their 

ears, screamed the Muses, 
" He may go off and murder himself, if he 

chooses, 
'T was a means self-defence only sanctioned 

his trying, 
'T is mere massacre now that the enemy 's 

flying; 
If he 's forced to 't again, and we happen 

to be there, 
Give us each a large handkerchief soaked 

in strong ether." 

I called this a " Fable for Critics ; " 
you think it 's 

More like a display of my rhythmical 
trinkets ; 

My plot, like an icicle, 's slender and slip- 
pery, 

Every moment more slender, and likely 
to slip awry, 

And the reader unwilling in loco desipere 

Is free to jump over as much of my frip- 
pery . 

As he fancies, and, if he 's a provident 
skipper, he 

May have like Odysseus control of the 
gales, 

And get safe to port, ere his patience quite 
fails ; 

Moreover, although 't is a slender return 

For your toil and expense, yet my paper 
will burn, 

And, if you have manfully struggled thus 
far with me, 

You may e'en twist me up, and just light 
your cigar with me: 

If too angry for that, you can tear me in 
pieces, 

And my membra disjecta consign to the 
breezes, 

A fate like great Ratzau's, whom one of 
those bores, 

Who beflead with bad verses poor Louis 
Quatorze, 

Describes (the first verse somehow ends 
with victoire), 

As dispersant partout et ses membres et sa 
gloire; 

Or, if I were over-desirous of earning 

A repute among noodles for classical learn- 
ing, 

I could pick you a score of allusions, i-wis, 



As new as the jests of Didaskalos tis ; 
Better still, I could make out a good solid 

list 
From authors recondite who do not exist, — 
But that would be naughty: at least, I 

could twist 
Something out of Absyrtus, or turn your 

inquiries 
After Milton's prose metaphor, drawn from 

Osiris ; 
But, as Cicero says he won't say this or that 
(A fetch, I must say, most transparent and 

flat), 
After saying whate'er he could possibly 

think of, — 
I simply will state that I pause on the 

brink of 
A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion, 
Made up of old jumbles of classic allusion: 
So, when you were thinking yourselves to 

be pitied, 
Just conceive how much harder your teeth 

you 'd have gritted, 
An 't were not for the dulness I 've kindly 

omitted. 

I 'd apologize here for my many digres- 
sions, 

Were it not that I 'm certain to trip into 
fresh ones 

('T is so hard to escape if you get in their 
mesh once); 

Just reflect, if you please, how 't is said by 
Horatius, 

That Mseonides nods now and then, and, 
my gracious ! 

It certainly does look a little bit ominous 

When he gets under way with ton d* 
apameibomenos. 

(Here a something occurs which I '11 just 
clap a rhyme to, 

And say it myself, ere a Zoilus have time 
to,— 

Any author a nap like Van Winkle's may 
take, 

If he only contrive to keep readers awake, 

But he '11 very soon find himself laid on 
the shelf, 

If they fall a-nodding when he nods him- 
self.) 

Once for all, to return, and to stay, will 
I, mill — 
When Phoebus expressed his desire for a 

, my, 



124 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



Our Hero, whose homoeopathic sagacity 

With an ocean of zeal mixed his drop of 
capacity, 

Set off for the garden as fast as the wind 

(Or, to take a comparison more to my 
mind, 

As a sound politician leaves conscience be- 
hind), 

And leaped the low fence, as a party hack 
jumps 

O'er his principles, when something else 
turns up trumps. 

He was gone a long time, and Apollo, 
meanwhile, 

Went over some sonnets of his with a file, 

For, of all compositions, he thought that the 
sonnet 

Best repaid all the toil you expended upon 
it; 

It should reach with one impulse the end of 
its course, 

And for one final blow collect all of its 
force ; 

Not a verse should be salient, but each one 
should tend 

With a wave-like up-gathering to break at 
the end; 

So, condensing the strength here, there 
smoothing a wry kink, 

He was killing the time, when up walked 
Mr. D ; 

At a few steps behind him, a small man in 
glasses 

Went dodging about, muttering, "Murder- 
ers ! asses ! " 

From out of his pocket a paper he 'd take, 

With a proud look of martyrdom tied to 
its stake, 

And, reading a squib at himself, he 'd say, 
" Here I see 

'Gainst American letters a bloody conspir- 
acy, 

They are all by my personal enemies writ- 
ten; 

I must post an anonymous letter to Britain, 

And show that this gall is the merest sug- 
gestion 

Of spite at my zeal on the Copyright ques- 
tion, 

For, on this side the water, 't is prudent to 
pull 

O'er the eyes of the public their national 
wool, 

By accusing of slavish respect to John Bull 



All American authors who have more or 
less 

Of that anti-American humbug — success, 

While in private we 're always embracing 
the knees 

Of some twopenny editor over the seas, 

And licking his critical shoes, for you 
know 't is 

The whole aim of our lives to get one Eng- 
lish notice ; 

My American puffs I would willingly burn 
all 

(They're all from one source, monthly, 
weekly, diurnal) 

To get but a kick from a transmarine jour- 
nal ! " 

So, culling the gibes of each critical 

scorner 
As if they were plums, and himself were 

Jack Horner, 
He came cautiously on, peeping round every 

corner, 
And into each hole where a weasel might 

pass in, 

Expecting the knife of some critic assassin, 
Who stabs to the heart with a caricature, 
Not so bad as those daubs of the Sun, to be 

sure, 
Yet done with a dagger-o'-type, whose vile 

portraits 
Disperse all one's good and condense all 

one's poor traits. 

Apollo looked up, hearing footsteps ap- 
proaching, 

And slipped out of sight the new rhymes 
he was broaching, — 

" Good day, Mr. D , I 'm happy to meet 

With a scholar so ripe, and a critic so neat, 

Who through Grub Street the soul of a 
gentleman carries ; 

What news from that suburb of London and 
Paris 

Which latterly makes such shrill claims to 
monopolize 

The credit of being the New World's me- 
tropolis ? " 

" Why, nothing of consequence, save this 

attack 
On my friend there, behind, by some pitiful 

hack, 
Who thinks every national author a poor 

one, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



I2 5 



That is n't a copy of something- that 's for- 
eign, 
And assaults the American Dick — " 

" Nay, 't is clear 
That your Damon there 's fond of a flea in 

his ear, 
And, if no one else furnished them gratis, 

on tick 
He would buy some himself, just to hear the 

old click ; 
Why, I honestly think, if some fool in Japan 
Should turn up his nose at the ' Poems on 

Man,' 
(Which contain many verses as fine, by the 

bye, 
As any that lately came under my eye,) 
Your friend there by some inward instinct 

would know it, 
Would get it translated, reprinted, and show 

it; 
As a man might take off a high stock to 

exhibit 
The autograph round his own neck of the 

gibbet ; 
Nor would let it rest so, but fire column after 

column, 
Signed Cato, or Brutus, or something as 

solemn, 
By way of displaying his critical crosses, 
And tweaking that poor transatlantic pro- 
boscis, 
His broadsides resulting (this last there 's no 

doubt of) 
In successively sinking the craft they 're 

fired out of. 
Now nobody knows when an author is hit, 
If he have not a public hysterical fit ; 
Let him only keep close in his snug garret's 

dim ether, 
And nobody 'd think of his foes — or of him 

either ; 
If an author have any least fibre of worth 

in him, 
Abuse would but tickle the organ of mirth 

in him ; 
All the critics on earth cannot crush with 

their ban 
One word that 's in tune with the nature of 



" Well, perhaps so ; meanwhile I have 
brought you a book, 
Into which if you '11 just have the goodness 
to look, 



You may feel so delighted (when once you 
are through it) 

As to deem it not unworth your while to re- 
view it, 

And I think I can promise your thoughts, 
if you do, 

A place in the next Democratic Review." 

"The most thankless of gods you must 

surely have thought me, 
For this is the forty-fourth copy you 've 

brought me ; 
I have given them away, or at least I have 

tried, 
But I 've forty-two left, standing all side by 

side 
(The man who accepted that one copy 

died), — i 
From one end of a shelf to the other they 

reach, 
' With the author's respects ' neatly written 

in each. 
The publisher, sure, will proclaim a Te 

Deum, 
When he hears of that order the British 

Museum 
Has sent for one set of what books were first 

printed 
In America, little or big, — for 't is hinted 
That this is the first truly tangible hope he 
Has ever had raised for the sale of a copy. 
I 've thought very often 't would be a good 

thing 
In all public collections of books, if a wing 
Were set off by itself, like the seas from the 

dry lands, 
Marked Literature suited to desolate islands, 
And filled with such books as could never be 

read 
Save by readers of proofs, forced to do it 

for bread, — 
Such books as one 's wrecked on in small 

country taverns, 
Such as hermits might mortify over in 

caverns, 
Such as Satan, if printing had then been 

invented, 
As the climax of woe, would to Job have 

presented, 
Such as Crusoe might dip in, although there 

are few so 
Outrageously cornered by fate as poor Cru- 
soe ; 
And since the philanthropists just now are 

banging 



126 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



And gibbeting all who 're in favor of hang- 
ing 

(Though Cheever has proved that the Bible 
and Altar 

Were let down from Heaven at the end of a 
halter, 

And that vital religion would dull and grow 
callous, 

Unrefreshed, now and then, with a sniff of 
the gallows), — 

And folks are beginning to think it looks 
odd, 

To • choke a poor scamp for the glory of 
G°jd; 

And that He .who esteems the Virginia reel 

A bait to draw saints from their spiritual 
weal, 

And regards the quadrille as a far greater 
knavery 

Than crushing his African children with 
slavery, — 

Since all who take part in a waltz or cotil- 
lon 

Are mounted for hell on the Devil's own 
pillion, *»* 

Who, as every true orthodox Christian well 
knows, 

Approaches the heart through the door of 
the toes, — 

That He, I was saying, whose judgments 
are stored 

For such as take steps in despite of his 
word, 

Should look with delight on the agonized 
prancing 

Of a wretch who has not the least ground 
for his dancing, 

While the State, standing by, sings a verse 
from the Psalter 

About offering to God on his favorite hal- 
ter, 

And, when the legs droop from their twitch- 
ing divergence, 

Sells the clothes to a Jew, and the corpse 
to the surgeons ; — 

Now, instead of all this, I think I can di- 
rect you all 

To a criminal code both humane and effect- 
ual ; — 

I propose to shut up every doer of wrong 

With these desperate books, for such term, 
short or long, 

As, by statute in such cases made and pro- 
vided, 

Shall be by your wise legislators decided: 



Thus: Let murderers be shut, to grow 

wiser and cooler, 
At hard labor for life on the works of 

Miss ; 

Petty thieves, kept from flagranter crimes 

by their fears, 
Shall peruse Yankee Doodle a blank term 

of years, — 
That American Punch, like the English, no 

doubt, — 
Just the sugar and lemons and spirit left 

out. 

" But stay, here comes Tityrus Griswold, 

and leads on 
The flocks whom he first plucks alive, and 

then feeds on, — 
A loud-cackling swarm, in whose feathers 

warm drest, 
He goes for as perfect a — swan as the rest. 

" There comes Emerson first, whose rich 

words, every one, 
Are like gold nails in temples to hang tro- 
phies on, 
Whose prose is grand verse, while his 

verse, the Lord knows, 
Is some of it pr — No, 't is not even 

prose; 
I 'm speaking of metres; some poems have 

welled 
From those rare depths of soul that have 

ne'er been excelled; 
They 're not epics, but that does n't matter 

a pin, 
In creating, the only hard thing 's to 

begin ; 
A grass-blade 's no easier to make than an 

oak; 
If you 've once found the way, you 've 

achieved the grand stroke; 
In the worst of his poems are mines of rich 

matter, 
But thrown in a heap with a crash and a 

clatter ; 
Now it is not one thing nor another alone 
Makes a poem, but rather the general 

tone, 
The something pervading, uniting the 

whole, 
The before unconceived, unconceivable soul, 
So that just in removing this trifle or that, 

you 
Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the 

statue ; 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



127 



Roots, wood, bark, and leaves singly per- 
fect may be, 

But, clapt hodge-podge together, they 
don't make a tree. 

" But, to come back to Emerson (whom, 
by the way, 

I believe we left waiting), — his is, we may 
say, 

A Greek "head on right Yankee shoulders, 
whose range 

Has Olympus for one pole, for t' other the 
Exchange ; 

He seems, to my thinking (although I 'm 
afraid 

The comparison must, long ere this, have 
been made), 

A Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyp- 
tian's gold mist 

And the Gascon's shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl 
coexist; 

All admire, and yet scarcely six converts 
he 's got 

To I don't (nor they either) exactly know 
what; 

For though he builds glorious temples, 't is 
odd 

He leaves never a doorway to get in a 
god. 

'T is refreshing to old-fashioned people like 
me 

To meet such a primitive Pagan as he, 

In whose mind all creation is duly re- 
spected 

As parts of himself — just a little pro- 
jected; 

And who 's willing to worship the stars and 
the sun, 

A convert to — nothing but Emerson. 

So perfect a balance there is in his head, 

That he talks of things sometimes as if 
they were dead; 

Life, nature, love, God, and affairs of that 
sort, 

He looks at as merely ideas; in short, 

As if they were fossils stuck round in a 
cabinet, 

Of such vast extent that our earth 's a mere 
dab in it; 

Composed just as he is inclined to conjec- 
ture her, 

Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine 
parts pure lecturer; 

You are filled with delight at his clear 
demonstration, 



Each figure, word, gesture, just fits the 

occasion, 
With the quiet precision of science he'll 

sort 'em, 
But you can't help suspecting the whole a 

post mortem. 

"There are persons, mole-blind to the 

soul's make and style, 
Who insist on a likeness 'twixt him and 

Carlyle ; 
To compare him with Plato would be 

vastly fairer, 
Carlyle 's the more burly, but E7^i»-,^the 

rarer; 
He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, true- 

lier, 

If C. 's as original, E. 's more peculiar; 
That he 's more of a man you might say of 

the one, 
Of the other he 's more of an Emerson; 
C. 's the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of 

limb, — 
E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and 

slim; 
The one 's two thirds Norseman, the other 

half Greek, 
Where the one 's most abounding, the 

other's to seek; 
C.'s generals require to be seen in the 

mass, — 
E.'s specialties gain if enlarged by the glass; 
C. gives nature and God his own fits of the 

blues, 
And rims common-sense things with mysti- 
cal hues, — 
E. sits in a mystery calm and intense, 
And looks coolly around him with sharp 

common-sense ; 
C. shows you how e very-day matters unite 
With the dim transdiurnal recesses of 

night, — 
While E., in a plain, preternatural way, 
Makes mysteries matters of mere every 

day; 
C. draws all his characters quite a la Fu- 

seli, — 
Not sketching their bundles of muscles and 

thews illy, 
He paints with a 1 ush so untamed and pro- 
fuse, 
They seem nothing but bundles of muscles 

and thews ; 
E. is rather like Flaxman, lines strait and 

severe, 



128 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



And a colorless outline, but full, round, and 
clear ; — 

To the men he thinks worthy he frankly 
accords 

The design of a white marble statue in 
words. 

C. labors to get at the centre, and then 

Take a reckoning from there of his actions 
and men ; 

E. calmly assumes the said centre as grant- 
ed, 

And, given himself, has whatever is wanted. 

" He has imitators in scores, who omit 
No part of the man but his wisdom and 

wit, — 
Who go carefully o'er the sky-blue of his 

brain, 
And when he has skimmed it once, skim it 

again ; 
If at all they resemble him, you may be sure 

it is 
Because their shoals mirror his mists and 

obscurities, 
As a mud-puddle seems deep as heaven for 

a minute, 
While a cloud that floats o'er is reflected 

within it. 

" There comes , for instance ; to see 

him 's rare sport, 
Tread in Emerson's tracks with legs pain- 
fully short ; 
How he jumps, how he strains, and gets red 

in the face, 
To keep step with the mystagogue's natural 

pace ! 
He follows as close as a stick to a rocket, 
His fingers exploring the prophet's each 

pocket. 
Fie, for shame, brother bard ; with good fruit 

of your own, 
Can't you let Neighbor Emerson's orchards 

alone ? 
Besides, 't is no use, you '11 not find e'en a 

core, — 

has picked up all the windfalls before. 

They might strip every tree, and E. never 

would catch 'em, 
His Hesperides have no rude dragon to 

watch 'em ; 
When they send him a dishful, and ask him 

to try 'em, 
He never suspects how the sly rogues came 

by 'em ; 



He wonders why 't is there are none such 

his trees on, 
And thinks 'em the best he has tasted th 

season. 

" Yonder, calm as a cloud, Alcott stall 

in a dream, 
And fancies himself in thy groves, Ac 

deme, 
With the Parthenon nigh, and the olive-tre: ; ; 

o'er him, 
And never a fact to perplex him or bore 

him, 
With a snug room at Plato's when night 

comes, to walk to, 
And people from morning till midnight H 

talk to, 
And from midnight till morning, nor snonl 

in their listening ; — 
So he muses, his face with the joy of it gli ft 

tening, 
For his highest conceit of a happiest state is 
Where they 'd live upon acorns, and hear 

him talk gratis; 
And indeed, I believe, no man ever talked 

better, — 
Each sentence hangs perfectly poised to a 

letter ; 
He seems piling words, but there 's royal 

dust hid 
In the heart of each sky-piercing pyramid. 
While he talks he is great, but goes out like 

a taper, 
If you shut him up closely with pen, ink, 

and paper; 
Yet his fingers itch for 'em from morning 

till night, 
And he thinks he does wrong if he dofl't 

always write; 
In this, as in all things, a lamb among m<n, 
He goes to sure death when he goes to iffli 

pen. 

" Close behind him is Brownson, his moith 

very full 

With attempting to gulp a Gregorian hvl ; 
Who contrives, spite of that, to pour ouatf 

he goes 

A stream of transparent and forcible pr(e; 
He shifts quite about, then proceeds to e- 

pound 
That 't is merely the earth, not himself, th 

turns round, 
And wishes it clearly impressed on yo 

mind 






A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



129 



That the weathercock rules and not follows 

the wind ; 
Proving first, then as deftly confuting each 

side, 
With no doctrine pleased that 's not some- 
where denied, 
He lays the denier away on the shelf, 
And then — down beside him lies gravely 

himself. 
He 's the Salt River boatman, who always 

stands willing 
To convey friend or foe without charging a 

shilling, 
And so fond of the trip that, when leisure 's 

to spare, 
He '11 row himself up, if he can't get a fare. 
The worst of it is, that his logic 's so strong, 
That of two sides he commonly chooses the 

wrong ; 
If there is ouly one, why, he '11 split it in two, 
And first pummel this half, then that, black 

and blue. 
That white 's white needs no proof, but it 

takes a deep fellow 
To prove it jet-black, and that jet-black is 

yellow. 
He offers the true faith to drink in a 

sieve, — 
When it reaches your lips there 's naught 

left to believe 
But a few silly- (syllo-, I mean,) -gisms 

that squat 'em 
Like tadpoles, o'erjoyed with the mud at the 

bottom. 

" There is Willis, all natty and jaunty and 

gay, 

Who says his best things in so foppish a 

way, 
With conceits and pet phrases so thickly 

o'erlaying 'em, 
That one hardly knows whether to thank 

him for saying 'em; 
Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose, 
Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her 

nose ! 
His prose had a natural grace of its own, 
And enough of it, too, if he 'd let it alone ; 
But he twitches and jerks so, one fairly gets 

tired, 
And is forced to forgive where one might 

have admired; 
Yet whenever it slips away free and un- 
laced, 
It runs like a stream with a musical waste, 



And gurgles along with the liquidest 
sweep ; — 

'T is not deep as a river, but who 'd have it 
deep ? 

In a country where scarcely a village is 
found 

That has not its author sublime and pro- 
found, 

For some one to be slightly shallow 's a duty, 

And Willis's shallowness makes half his 
beauty. 

His prose winds along with a blithe, gur- 
gling error, 

And reflects all of Heaven it can see in its 
mirror: 

'T is a narrowish strip, but it is not an arti- 
fice; 

'T is the true out-of-doors with its genuine 
hearty phiz; 

It is Nature herself, and there 's something 
in that, 

Since most brains reflect but the crown of a 
hat. 

Few volumes I know to read under a tree, 

More truly delightful than his A l'Abri, 

With the shadows of leaves flowing over 
your book, 

Like ripple-shades netting the bed of a 
brook; 

With June coming softly your shoulder to 
look over, 

Breezes waiting to turn every leaf of your 
book over, 

And Nature to criticise still as you read, — 

The page that bears that is a rare one in- 
deed. 

" He 's so innate a cockney, that had he 

been born 
Where plain bare-skin 's the only full-dress 

that is worn, 
He 'd have given his own such an air that 

you 'd say 
'T had been made by a tailor to lounge in 

Broadway. 
His nature 's a glass of champagne with the 

foam on 't, 
As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beau- 
mont ; 
So his best things are done in the flush of 

the moment; 
If he wait, all is spoiled ; he may stir it and 

shake it, 
But, the fixed air once gone, he can never 

re-make it. 



13° 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



He might be a marvel of easy delightfulness, 
If he would not sometimes leave the r out 

of sprightf ulness ; 
And he ought to let Scripture alone — 't is 

self-slaughter, 
For nobody likes inspiration-and-water. 
He 'd have been just the fellow to sup at 

the Mermaid, 
Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to 

the barmaid, 
His wit running up as Canary ran down, — 
The topmost bright bubble on the wave of 

The Town. 

" Here comes Parker, the Orson of par- 
sons, a man 
Whom the Church undertook to put under 

her ban 
(The Church of Socinus, I mean), — his 

opinions 
Being So- (ultra) -cinian, they shocked the 

Socinians ; 
They believed — faith, I 'm puzzled — I 

think I may call 
Their belief a believing in nothing at all, 
Or something of that sort ; I know they all 

went 
For a general union of total dissent: 
He went a step farther; without cough or 

hem, 
He frankly avowed he believed not in them ; 
And, before he could be jumbled up or pre- 
vented, 
From their orthodox kind of dissent he 

dissented. 
There was heresy here, you perceive, for 

the right 
Of privately judging means simply that 

light 
Has been granted to me, for deciding on 

. you; 
And in happier times, before Atheism grew, 
The deed contained clauses for cooking you 

too: 
Now at Xerxes and Knut we all laugh, yet 

our foot 
With the same wave is wet that mocked 

Xerxes and Knut, 
And we all entertain a secure private notion, 
That our Thus far ! will have a great weight 

with the ocean. 
'T was so with our liberal Christians: they 

bore 
With sincerest conviction their chairs to the 

shore ; 



They brandished their worn theological 

birches, 
Bade natural progress keep out of the 

Churches, 
And expected the lines they had drawn to 

prevail 
With the fast -rising tide to keep out of 

their pale; 
They had formerly dammed the Pontifical 

See, 
And the same thing, they thought, would 

do nicely for P. ; 
But he turned up his nose at their mum- 
ming and shamming, 
And cared (shall I say ?) not a d for 

their damming; 
So they first read him out of their church, 

and next minute 
Turned round and declared he had never 

been in it. 
But the ban was too small or the man was 

too big, 
For he recks not their bells, books, and 

candles a fig 
(He scarce looks like a man who would stay 

treated shabbily, 
Sophroniscus' son's head o'er the features 

of Rabelais) ; — 
He bangs and bethwacks them, — their backs 

he salutes 
With the whole tree of knowledge torn up 

by the roots; 
His sermons with satire are plenteously 

verjuiced, 
And he talks in one breath of Confutzee, 

Cass, Zerduscht, 
Jack Robinson, Peter the Hermit, Strap, 

Dathan, 
Cush, Pitt (not the bottomless, that he 's 

no faith in), 
Pan, Pillicock, Shakespeare, Paul, Toots, 

Monsieur Tonson, 
Aldebaran, Alcander, Ben Khorat, Ben 

Jonson, 
Thoth, Richter, Joe Smith, Father Paul, 

Judah Monis, 
Musseus, Muretus, hem, — n Scorpionis, 
Maccabee, Maccaboy, Mac — Mac — ah ! 

Machiavelli, 
Condorcet, Count d'Orsay, Conder, Say, 

Ganganelli, 
Orion, O'Connell, the Chevalier D'O, 
(See the Memoirs of Sully,) rb irav, the 

great toe 
Of the statue of Jupiter, now made to pass 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



J 3i 



For that of Jew Peter by good Romish 
brass, 

(You may add for yourselves, for I find it 
a bore, 

All the names you have ever, or not, heard 
before, 

And when you 've done that — why, invent 
a few more). 

His bearers can't tell you on Sunday be- 
forehand, 

If in that day's discourse they '11 be Bibled 
or Koraned, 

For he 's seized the idea (by his martyr- 
dom fired) 

That all men (not orthodox) may be in- 
spired ; 

Yet though wisdom profane with his creed 
he may weave in, 

He makes it quite clear what he does n't 
believe in, 

While some, who decry him, think all 
Kingdom Come 

Is a sort of a, kind of a, species of Hum, 

Of which, as it were, so to speak, not a 
crumb 

Would be left, if we did n't keep carefully 
mum, 

And, to make a clean breast, that 't is per- 
fectly plain 

That all kin els of wisdom are somewhat 
profane ; 

Now P.'s creed than this may be lighter or 
darker, 

But in one thing, 't is clear, he has faith, 
namely — Parker; 

And this is what makes him the crowd- 
drawing preacher, 

There 's a background of god to each hard- 
working feature, 

Every word that he speaks has been fierily 
furnaced 

In the blast of a life that has struggled in 
earnest : 

There he stands, looking more like a 
ploughman than priest, 

If not dreadfully awkward, not graceful at 
least, 

His gestures all downright and same, if 
you will, 

As of brown-fisted Hobnail in hoeing a 
drill; 

But his periods fall on you, stroke after 
stroke, 

Like the blows of a lumberer felling an 
oak, 



You forget the man wholly, you 're thank- 
ful to meet 

With a preacher who smacks of the field 
and the street, 

And to hear, you 're not over-particular 
whence, 

Almost Taylor's profusion, quite Latimer's 
sense. 

" There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and 
as dignified, 

As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is 
ignified, 

Save when by reflection 't is kindled o' 
nights 

With a semblance of flame by the chill 
Northern Lights. 

He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard 
of your nation 

(There 's no doubt that he stands in su- 
preme iceolation), 

Your topmost Parnassus he may set his 
heel on. 

But no warm applauses come, peal follow- 
ing peal on, — 

He 's too smooth and too polished to hang 
any zeal on: 

Unqualified merits, 1 '11 grant, if you 
choose, he has 'em, 

But he lacks the one merit of kindling 
enthusiasm ; 

If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, 

Like being stirred up with the very North 
Pole. 

"He is very nice reading in summer, 
but inter 

Nos, we don't want extra freezing in win- 
ter; 

Take him up in the depth of July, my ad- 
vice is, 

When you feel an Egyptian devotion to 
ices. 

But, deduct all you can, there 's enough 
that 's right good in him, 

He has a true soul for field, river, and 
wood in him; 

And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, 
or where'er it is, 

Glows, softens, and thrills with the tender- 
est charities — 

To you mortals that delve in this trade- 
ridden planet ? 

No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their 
limestone and granite. 



132 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



If you 're one who in loco (add foco here) 



You will get of his outermost heart (as I 
guess) a piece; 

But you 'd get deeper down if you came as 
a precipice, 

And would break the last seal of its in- 
wardest fountain, 

If you only could palm yourself off for a 
mountain. 

Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discern- 
ing, 

Some scholar who 's hourly expecting his 
learning, 

Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but 
Wordsworth 

May be rated at more than your whole 
tuneful herd 's worth. 

No, don't be absurd, he 's an excellent 
Bryant ; 

But, my friends, you '11 endanger the life 
of your client, 

By attempting to stretch him up into a 
giant: 

If you choose to compare him, I think 
there are two per- 

-sons fit for a parallel — Thomson and 
Cowper; 1 

I don't mean exactly, — there 's something 
of each, 

There 's T.'s love of nature, C.'s penchant 
to preach; 

Just mix up their minds so that C.'s spice 
of craziness 

Shall balance and neutralize T.'s turn for 
laziness, 

And it gives you a brain cool, quite fric- 
tionless, quiet, 

Whose internal police nips the buds of all 
riot, — 

A brain like a permanent strait-jacket put on 

The heart that strives vainly to burst off a 
button, — 

A brain which, without being slow or me- 
chanic, 

Does more than a larger less drilled, more 
volcanic ; 

He 's a Cowper condensed, with no crazi- 
ness bitten, 

And the advantage that Wordsworth be- 
fore him had written. 



1 To demonstrate quickly and easily how per- 
versely absurd 't is to sound this name Coivper, 
As people in general call him named super, 
I remark that he rhymes it himself with horse-trooper. 



" But, my dear little bardlings, don't 

prick up your ears 
Nor suppose I would rank you and Bryant 

as peers; 
If I call him an iceberg, I don't mean to 

say 
There is nothing in that which is grand in 

its way; 
He is almost the one of your poets that 

knows 
How much grace, strength, and dignity lie 

in Repose; 
If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise 

to mar 
His thought's modest fulness by going too 

far; 
'T would be well if your authors should all 

make a trial 
Of what virtue there is in severe self- 
denial, 
And measure their writings by Hesiod's 

staff, 
Which teaches that all has less value than 

half. 

"There is Whittier, whose swelling and 
vehement heart 

Strains the strait - breasted drab of the 
Quaker apart, 

And reveals the live Man, still supreme 
and erect, 

Underneath the bemummying wrappers of 
sect; 

There was ne'er a man born who had more 
of the swing 

Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of 
thing; 

And his failures arise (though he seem not 
to know it) 

From the very same cause that has made 
him a poet, — 

A fervor of mind which knows no separa- 
tion 

'Twixt simple excitement and pure inspira- 
tion, 

As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred 
from not knowing 

If 't were I or mere wind through her tri- 
pod was blowing; 

Let his mind once get head in its favorite 
direction 

And the torrent of verse bursts the dams 
of reflection, 

While, borne with the rush of the metre 
along, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



*33 



The poet may chance to go right or go 
wrong, 

Content with the whirl and delirium of 
song; 

Then his grammar 's not always correct, 
nor his rhymes, 

And he 's prone to repeat his own lyrics 
sometimes, 

Not his best, though, for those are struck 
off at white-heats 

When the heart in his breast like a trip- 
hammer beats, 

And can ne'er be repeated again any more 

Than they could have been carefully plot- 
ted before: 

Like old what 's-his-name there at the bat- 
tle of Hastings 

(Who, however, gave more than mere 
rhythmical bastings), 

Our Quaker leads off metaphorical fights 

For reform and whatever they call human 
rights, 

Both singing and striking in front of the 
war, 

And hitting his foes with the mallet of 
Thor; 

Anne haec, one exclaims, on beholding his 
knocks, 

Vestis filii tui, O leather-clad Fox ? 

Can that be thy son, in the battle's mid 
din, 

Preaching brotherly love and then driving 
it in 

To the brain of the tough old Goliath of 
sin, 

With the smoothest of pebbles from Cas- 
taly's spring 

Impressed on his hard moral sense with a 
sling ? 

"All honor and praise to the right- 
hearted bard 
Who was true to The Voice when such 

service was hard, 
Who himself was so free he dared sing for 

the slave 
WTien to look but a protest in silence was 

brave ; 
All honor and praise to the women and men 
Who spoke out for the dumb and the 

down-trodden then ! 
It needs not to name them, already for 

each 
I see History preparing the statue and 

niche ; 



They were harsh, but shall you be so 
shocked at hard words 

Who have beaten your pruning-hooks up 
into swords, 

Whose rewards and hurrahs men are surer 
to gain 

By the reaping of men and of women than 
grain ? 

Why should you stand aghast at their 
fierce wordy war, if 

You scalp one another for Bank or for 
Tariff ? 

Your calling them cut-throats and knaves 
all day long 

Does n't prove that the use of hard lan- 
guage is wrong; 

While the World's heart beats quicker to 
think of such men 

As signed Tyranny's doom with a bloody 
steel-pen, 

While on Fourth-of -Julys beardless orators 
fright one 

With hints at Harmodius and Aristogeiton, 

You need not look shy at your sisters and 
brothers 

Who stab with sharp words for the free- 
dom of others; — 

No, a wreath, twine a wreath for the loyal 
and true 

Who, for sake of the many, dared stand 
with the few, 

Not of blood-spattered laurel for enemies 
braved, 

But of broad, peaceful oak-leaves for citi- 
zens saved ! 

" Here comes Dana, abstractedly loiter- 
ing along, 

Involved in a paulo-post-future of song, 

Who '11 be going to write what '11 never be 
written 

Till the Muse, ere he think of it, gives him 
the mitten, — 

Who is so well aware of how things should 
be done, 

That his own works displease him before 
they 're begun, — 

Who so well all that makes up good poetry 
knows, 

That the best of his poems is written in 
prose ; 

All saddled and bridled stood Pegasus wait- 
ing* 

He was booted and spurred, but he loitered 
debating ; 



134 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



In a very grave question bis soul was im- 
mersed, — 
Which foot in the stirrup he ought to put 

first; 
And, while this point and that he judicially 

dwelt on, 
He, somehow or other, had written Paul 

Felton, 
Whose beauties or faults, whichsoever you 

see there, 
You'll allow only genius could hit upon 

either. 
That he once was the Idle Man none will 

deplore, 
But I fear he will never be anything more ; 
The ocean of song heaves and glitters before 

him, 
The depth and the vastness and longing 

sweep o'er him, 
He knows every breaker and shoal on the 

chart, 
He has the Coast Pilot and so on by heart, 
Yet he spends his whole life, like the man 

in the fable, 
In learning to swim on his library-table. 

" There swaggers John Neal, who has 

wasted in Maine 
The sinews and cords of his pugilist brain, 
Who might have been poet, but that, in its 

stead, he 
Preferred to believe that he was so already; 
Too hasty to wait till Art's ripe fruit should 

drop, 
He must pelt down an unripe and colicky 

crop; 
Who took to the law, and had this sterling 

plea for it, 
It required him to quarrel, and paid him a 

fee for it; 
A man who 's made less than he might have, 

because 
He always has thought himself more than 

he was, — 
Who, with very good natural gifts as a bard, 
Broke the strings of his lyre out by strik- 
ing too hard, 
And cracked half the notes of a truly fine 

voice, 
Because song drew less instant attention 

than noise. 
Ah, men do not know how much strength is 

in poise, 
That he goes the farthest who goes far 

enough, 



And that all beyond that is just bother and 

stuff. 
No vain man matures, he makes too much 

new wood; 
His blooms are too thick for the fruit to be 

good; 
'T is the modest man ripens, 't is he that 

achieves, 
Just what 's needed of sunshine and shade 

he receives; 
Grapes, to mellow, require the cool dark of 

their leaves; 
Neal wants balance; he throws his mind 

always too far, 
Whisking out flocks of comets, but never a 

star; 
He has so much muscle, and loves so to 

show it, 
That he strips himself naked to prove he 's 

a poet, 
And, to show he could leap Art's wide 

ditch, if he tried, 
Jumps clean o'er it, and into the hedge 

t' other side. 
He has strength, but there 's nothing about 

him in keeping; 
One gets surelier onward by walking than 

leaping; 
He has used his own sinews himself to dis- 
tress, 
And had done vastly more had he done 

vastly less; 
In letters, too soon is as bad as too late ; 
Could he only have waited he might have 

been great; 
But he plumped into Helicon up to the 

waist, 
And muddied the stream ere he took his 

first taste. 



"There is Hawthorne, with genius so 

shrinking and rare 
That you hardly at first see the strength 

that is there; 
A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet, 
So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so 

fleet, 
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet; 
'T is as if a rough oak that for ages had 

stood, 
With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of 

the wood, 
Should bloom, after cycles of struggle and 

scathe, 
With a single anemone trembly and rathe ; 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



r 35 



His strength is so tender, his wilclness so 

meek, 
That a suitable parallel sets one to seek, — 
He 's a John Bunyan Fouque*, a Puritan 

Tieck; 
When Nature was shaping him, clay was 

not granted 
For making so full-sized a man as she 

wanted, 
So, to fill out her model, a little she spared 
From some finer-grained stuff for a woman 

prepared, 
And she could not have hit a more excellent 

plan 
For making him fully and perfectly man. 
The success of her scheme gave her so much 

delight, 
That she tried it again, shortly after, in 

D wight: 



Only, while she was kneading and shaping - ^All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie. 



the clay, 
She sang to her work in her sweet childish 

way, 
And found, when she 'd put the last touch 

to his soul, 
That the music had somehow got mixed 

with the whole. 

"Here's Cooper, who's written six vol- 
umes to show 

He 's as good as a lord : well, let 's grant 
that he 's so ; 

If a person prefer that description of praise, 

Why, a coronet's certainly cheaper than 
bays; 

But he need take no pains to convince us 
he 's not 

(As his enemies say) the American Scott. 

Choose any twelve men, and let C. read 
aloud 

That one of his novels of which he 's most 
proud, 

And I 'd lay any bet that, without ever 
quitting 

Their box, they 'd be all, to a man, for ac- 
quitting. 

He has drawn you one character, though, 
that is new, 

One wildflower he's plucked that is wet 
with the dew 

Of this fresh Western world, and, the thing 
not to mince, 

He has done naught but copy it ill ever 
since ; 

His Indians, with proper respect be it said, 



Are just Natty Bumppo, daubed over with 

red, 
And his very Long Toms are the same 

useful Nat, 
Rigged up in duck pants and a sou'wester 

hat 
(Though once in a Coffin, a good chance 

was found 
To have slipped the old fellow away under- 
ground). 
All his other men-figures are clothes upon 

sticks, 
The derniere chemise of a man in a fix 
(As a captain besieged, when his garrison 's 

small, 
Sets up caps upon poles to be seen o'er the 

wall); 
And the women he draws from one model 

don't vary, 



When a character 's wanted, he goes to the 

task 
As a cooper would do in composing a cask; 
He picks out the staves, of their qualities 

heedful, 
Just hoops them together as tight as is 

needful, 
And, if the best fortune should crown the 

attempt, he 
Has made at the most something wooden 

and empty. 

"Don't suppose I would underrate 
Cooper's abilities; 

If I thought you 'd do that, I should feel 
very ill at ease; 

The men who have given to one character life 

And objective existence are not very rife; 

You may number them all, both prose- 
writers and singers, 

Without overrunning the bounds of your 
fingers, 

And Natty won't go to oblivion quicker 

Than Adams the parson or Primrose the 
vicar. 

" There is one thing in Cooper I like, 
too, and that is 

That on manners he lectures his country- 
men gratis; 

Not precisely so either, because, for a 
rarity, 

He is paid for his tickets in unpopularity. 

Now he may overcharge his American pic- 
tures, 



136 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



But you '11 grant there 's a good deal of 

truth in his strictures; 
And I honor the man who is willing to sink 
Half his present repute for the freedom to 

think, 
And, when he has thought, be his cause 

strong or weak, 
Will risk t' other half for the freedom to 



Caring naught for what vengeance the 

mob has in store, 
Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or 

lower. 

" There are truths you Americans need 

to be told, 
And it never '11 refute them to swagger 

and scold; 
John Bull, looking o'er the Atlantic, in 

choler 
At your aptness for trade, says you worship 

the dollar; 
But to scorn such eye-dollar-try 's what 

very few do, 
And John goes to that church as often as 

you do. 
No matter what John says, don't try to 

outcrow him, 
'T is enough to go quietly on and outgrow 

him; 
Like most fathers, Bull hates to see Num- 
ber One 
Displacing himself in the mind of his son, 
And detests the same faults in himself 

he 'd neglected 
When he sees them again in his child's 

glass reflected; 
To love one another you 're too like by 

half; 
If he is a bull, you 're a pretty stout calf, 
And tear your own pasture for naught but 

to show 
What a nice pair of horns you 're begin- 
ning to grow. 

" There are one or two things I should 

just like to hint, 
For you don't often get the truth told you 

in print; 
The most of you (this is what strikes all 

beholders) 
Have a mental and physical stoop in the 

shoulders ; 
Though you ought to be free as the winds 

and the waves, 



You 've the gait and the manners of run- 
away slaves; 
Though you brag of your New World, you 

don't half believe in it; 
And as much of the Old as is possible . 

weave in it; 
Your goddess of freedom, a tight, buxom 

girl, 
With lips like a cherry and teeth like a 

pearl, 
With eyes bold as Here's, and hair floating 

free, 
And full of the sun as the spray of the sea, 
Who can sing at a husking or romp at a 

shearing, 
Who can trip through the forests alone 

without fearing, 
Who can drive home the cows with a song 

through the grass, 
Keeps glancing aside into Europe's cracked 

glass, 
Hides her red hands in gloves, pinches up 

her lithe waist, 
And makes herself wretched with transma- 
rine taste; 
She loses her fresh country charm when 

she takes 
Any mirror except her own rivers and 

lakes. 

"You steal Englishmen's books and 
think Englishmen's thought, 

With their salt on her tail your wild eagle 
is caught; 

Your literature suits its each whisper and 
motion 

To what will be thought of it over the 
ocean; 

The cast clothes of Europe your statesman- 
ship tries 

And mumbles again the old blarneys and 
lies ; — 

Forget Europe wholly, your veins throb 
with blood, 

To which the dull current in hers is but mud: 

Let her sneer, let her say your experiment 
fails, 

In her voice there 's a tremble e'en now 
while she rails, 

And your shore will soon be in the nature 
of things 

Covered thick with gilt drift-wood of cast- 
away kings, 

Where alone, as it were in a Longfellow's 
Waif, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



137 



Her- fugitive pieces will find themselves 
safe. 

O my friends, thank your god, if you have 
one, that he 

'Twixt the Old World and you set the gulf 
of a sea; 

Be strong-backed, brown-handed, upright 
as your pines, 

By the scale of a hemisphere shape your 
designs, 

Be true to yourselves and this new nine- 
teenth age, 

As a statue by Powers, or a picture by 



Plough, sail, forge, build, carve, paint, 
make all over new, 

To your own New- World instincts contrive 
to be true, 

Keep your ears open wide to the Future's 
first call, 

Be whatever you will, but yourselves first 
- of all, 

Stand fronting the dawn on Toil's heaven- 
scaling peaks, 

And become my new race of more practi- 
cal Greeks. — 

Hem ! your likeness at present, I shudder 
to tell o't, 

Is that you have your slaves, and the 
Greek had his helot." 

Here a gentleman present, who had in 

his attic 
More pepper than brains, shrieked, " The 

man 's a fanatic, 
I 'm a capital tailor with warm tar and 

feathers, 
And will make him a suit that '11 serve in 

all weathers; 
But we '11 argue the point first, I 'm willing 

to reason 't, 
Palaver before condemnation 's but decent ; 
So, through my humble person, Humanity 

begs 
Of the friends of true freedom a loan of 

bad eggs." 
But Apollo let one such a look of his show 

forth 
As when fte vvkti 4oik<&s, and so forth, 
And the gentleman somehow slunk out of 

the way, 
But, as he was going, gained courage to 

say, — 
" At slavery in the abstract my whole soul 

rebels, 



I am as strongly opposed to 't as any one 
else." 

" Ay, no doubt, but whenever I 've hap- 
pened to meet 

With a wrong or a crime, it is always con- 
crete," 

Answered Phoebus severely; then turning 
to us, 

" The mistake of such fellows as just made 
the fuss 

Is only in taking a great busy nation 

For a part of their pitiful cotton-planta- 
tion. — 

But there comes Miranda, Zeus ! where 
shall I flee to ? 

She has such a penchant for bothering me 
too ! 

She always keeps asking if I don't observe a 

Particular likeness 'twixt her and Minerva; 

She tells me my efforts in verse are quite 
clever; — 

She 's been travelling now, and will be 
worse than ever; 

One would think, though, a sharp-sighted 
noter she 'd be 

Of all that 's worth mentioning over the 
sea, 

For a woman must surely see well, if she 
try, 

The whole of whose being 's a capital I: 

She will take an old notion, and make it 
her own, 

By saying it o'er in her Sibylline tone, 

Or persuade you 't is something tremen- 
dously deep, 

By repeating it so as to put you to sleep; 

Arid she well may defy any mortal to see 
through it, 

When once she has mixed up her infinite 
me through it. 

There is one thing she owns in her own 
single right, 

It is native and genuine — namely, her 
spite; 

Though, when acting as censor, she pri- 
vately blows 

A censer of vanity 'neath her own nose." 

Here Miranda came up, and said, " Phoe- 
bus ! you know 
That the Infinite Soul has its infinite woe, 
As I ought to know, having lived cheek by 

jowl, 
Since the day I was born, with the Infinite 
Soul; 



138 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



I myself introduced, I myself, I alone, 

To my Land's better life authors solely my 
own, 

Who the sad heart of earth on their shoul- 
ders have taken, 

Whose works sound a depth by Life's 
quiet unshaken, 

Such as Shakespeare, for instance, the 
Bible, and Bacon, 

Not to mention my own works; Time's 
nadir is fleet, 

And, as for myself, I 'm quite out of con- 
ceit " — 

" Quite out of conceit ! I 'm enchanted 
to hear it," 

Cried Apollo aside. " Who 'd have thought 
she was near it ? 

To be sure, one is apt to exhaust those 
commodities 

One uses too fast, yet in this case as odd it is 

As if Neptune should say to his turbots 
and whitings, 

' I 'm as much out of salt as Miranda's own 
writings ' 

(Which, as she in her own happy manner 
has said, 

Sound a depth, for 't is one of the functions 
of lead). 

She often has asked me if I could not find 

A place somewhere near me that suited her 
mind; 

I know but a single one vacant, which she, 

With her rare talent that way, would fit to 
aT. 

And it would not imply any pause or cessa- 
tion 

In the work she esteems her peculiar voca- 
tion, — 

She may enter on duty to-day, if she 



And remain Tiring- woman for life to the 
Muses." 

Miranda meanwhile has succeeded in 
driving 

Up into a corner, in spite of their striving, 

A small flock of terrified victims, and 
there, 

With an I-turn-the-crank-of-the-Universe 
air 

And a tone which, at least to my fancy, ap- 
pears 

Not so much to be entering as boxing your 
ears, 



Is unfolding a tale (of herself, I surmise, 
For 't is dotted as thick as a peacock's with 

I's). 
Apropos of Miranda, I '11 rest on my oars 
And drift through a trifling digression on 

bores, 
For, though not wearing ear-rings in more 

majorum, 
Our ears are kept bored just as if we still 

wore 'em. 
There was one feudal custom worth keep- 
ing; at least, 
Roasted bores made a part of each well- 
ordered feast, 
And of all quiet pleasures the very ne plus 
Was in hunting wild bores as the tame 

ones hunt us. 
Archseologians, I know, who have personal 

fears 
Of this wise application of hounds and of 

spears, 
Have tried to make out, with a zeal more 

than wonted, 
'T was a kind of wild swine that our ances- 
tors hunted; 
But I '11 never believe that the age which 

has strewn 
Europe o'er with cathedrals, and otherwise 

shown 
That it knew what was what, could by 

chance not have known 
(Spending, too, its chief time with its buff 

on, no doubt) 
Which beast 't would improve the world 

most to thin out. 
I divide bores myself, in the manner of 

rifles, 
Into two great divisions, regardless of tri- 
fles;— 
There 's your smooth-bore and screw-bore, 

who do not much vary 
In the weight of cold lead they respectively 

carry. 
The smooth-bore is one in whose essence 

the mind 
Not a corner nor cranny to cling by can 

find; 
You feel as in nightmares sometimes, when 

you slip 
Down a steep slated roof, where there's 

nothing to grip; 
You slide and you slide, the blank horror 

increases, — 
You had rather by far be at once smashed 

to pieces; 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



!39 



You fancy a whirlpool below white and 
frothing, 

And finally drop off and light upon — no- 
thing. 

The screw-bore has twists in him, faint 
predilections 

For going just wrong in the tritest direc- 
tions; 

When he 's wrong he is flat, when he 's 
right he can't show it, 

He '11 tell you what Snooks said about the 
new poet, 1 

Or how Fogrum was outraged by Tenny- 
son's Princess; 

He has spent all his spare time and intel- 
lect since his 

Birth in perusing, on each art and science, 

Just the books in which no one puts any 
reliance, 

And though nemo, we 're told, Jioris omnibus 
sapit, 

The rule will not fit him, however you 
shape it, 

For he has a perennial foison of sappiness; 

He has just enough force to spoil half your 
day's happiness, 

And to make him a sort of mosquito to be 
with, 

But just not enough to dispute or agree 
with. 

These sketches I ma,de (not to be too 

explicit) 
From two honest fellows who made me 

a visit, 
And broke, like the tale of the Bear and 

the Fiddle, 
My reflections on Halleck short off by the 

middle; 
I sha'n't now go into the subject more 

deeply, 
For I notice that some of my readers look 

sleep'ly; 
I will barely remark that, 'mongst civilized 

nations, 
There 's none that displays more exemplary 

patience 
Under all sorts of boring, at all sorts of 

hours, 
From all sorts of desperate persons, than 

ours. 
Not to speak of our papers, our State legis- 
latures, 

1 (If you call Snooks an owl, he will show by his looks 
That he 's morally certain you 're jealous of Snooks.) 



And other such trials for sensitive na- 
tures, 

Just look for a moment at Congress, • — ap- 
palled, 

My fancy shrinks back from the phantom 
it called; 

Why, there 's scarcely a member unworthy 
to frown 

'Neath what Fourier nicknames the Boreal 
crown; 

Only think what that infinite bore-pow'r 
could do 

If applied with a utilitarian view; 

Suppose, for example, we shipped it with 
care 

To Sahara's great desert and let it bore 
there; 

If they held one short session and did no- 
thing else, 

They 'd fill the whole waste with Artesian 
wells. 

But 't is time now with pen phonographic 
to follow 

Through some more of his sketches our 
laughing Apollo: — 

/ 
" There comes Harry Franco, and, as he 
draws near, 

You find that 's a smile which you took for 
a sneer; 

One half of him contradicts t' other; his 
wont 

Is to say very sharp things and do very 
blunt ; 

His manner 's as hard as his feelings are 
tender, 

And a sortie he '11 make when he means to 
surrender; 

He 's in joke half the time when he seems 
to be sternest, 

When he seems to be joking, be sure he 's 
in earnest; 

He has common sense in a way that 's un- 
common, 

Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends 
like a woman, 

Builds his dislikes of cards and his friend- 
ships of oak, 

Loves a prejudice better than aught but a 
joke, _ 

Is half upright Quaker, half downright 
Come-outer, 

Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad 
about her, 

Quite artless himself, is a lover of Art, 



140 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



Shuts you out of his secrets and into his 
heart, 

And though not a poet, yet all must ad- 
mire 

In his letters of Pinto his skill on the liar. 

" There comes Poe, with his raven, like 

Barnaby Rudge, 
Three fifths of him genius and two fifths 

sheer fudge, 
Who talks like a book of iambs and penta- 
meters, 
In a way to make people of common sense 

damn metres, 
Who has written some things quite the 

best of their kind, 
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed 

out by the mind, 
Who — But hey-day ! What 's this ? 

Messieurs Mathews and Poe, 
You must n't fling mud-balls at Longfellow 

so, 
Does it make a man worse that his charac- 
ter 's such 
As to make his friends love him (as you 

think) too much? 
Why, there is not a bard at this moment 

alive 
More willing than he that his fellows should 

thrive ; 
While you are abusing him thus, even now 
He would help either one of you out of a 

slough ; 
You may say that he 's smooth and all that 

till you 're hoarse, 
But remember that elegance also is force ; 
After polishing granite as much as you will, 
The heart keeps its tough old persistency 

still; 
Deduct all you can, that still keeps you at 

bay; 
Why, he '11 live till men weary of Collins 

and Gray. 
I 'm not over-fond of Greek metres in Eng- 
lish, 
To me rhyme 's a gain, so it be not too jin- 

glish, 
And your modern hexameter verses are no 

more 
Like Greek ones than sleek Mr. Pope is 

like Homer; 
As the roar of the sea to the coo of a pigeon 

is, 
So, compared to your moderns, sounds old 

Melesigenes ; 



I may be too partial, the reason, perhaps, 

o't is 
That I 've heard the old blind man recite 

his own rhapsodies, 
And my ear with that music impregnate 

may be, 
Like the poor exiled shell with the soul of 

the sea, 
Or as one can't bear Strauss when his na- 
ture is cloven 
To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of 

Beethoven; 
But, set that aside, and 't is truth that I 

speak, 
Had Theocritus written in English, not 

Greek, 
I believe that his exquisite sense would 

scarce change a line 
In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral 

Evangelineo 
That 's not ancient nor modern, its place is 

apart 
Where time has no sway, in the realm of 

pure Art, 
'T is a shrine of retreat from Earth's 

hubbub and strife 
As quiet and chaste as the author's own life. 

" There comes Philothea, her face all 

aglow, 
She has just been dividing some poor crea- 
ture's woe, 
And can't tell which pleases her most, to 

relieve 
His want, or his story to hear and believe; 
No doubt against many deep griefs she 

prevails, 
For her ear is the refuge of destitute tales ; 
She knows well that silence is sorrow's best 

food, 
And that talking draws off from the heart 

its black blood, 
So she '11 listen with patience and let you 

unfold 
Your bundle of rags as 't were pure cloth 

of gold, 
Which, indeed, it all turns to as soon as she 's 

touched it, 
And (to borrow a phrase from the nursery) 

muched it; 
She has such a musical taste, she will go 
Any distance to hear one who draws a long 

bow; 
She will swallow a wonder by mere might 

and main, 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



141 



And thinks it Geometry's fault if she 's fain 
To consider things flat, inasmuch as they 're 

plain ; 
Facts with her are accomplished, as French- 
men would say — 
They will prove all she wishes them to 

either way, — 
And, as fact lies on this side or that, we 

must try, 
If we 're seeking the truth, to find where it 

don't lie; 
I was telling her once of a marvellous aloe 
That for thousands of years had looked 

spindling and sallow, 
And, though nursed by the fruitfullest 

powers of mud, 
Had never vouchsafed e'en so much as a 

bud, 
Till its owner remarked (as a sailor, you 

know, 
Often will in a calm) that it never would 

blow, 
For he wished to exhibit the plant, and de- 
signed 
That its blowing should help him in raising 

the wind; 
At last it was told him that if he should 

water 
Its roots with the blood of his unmarried 

daughter 
(Who was born, as her mother, a Calvinist, 

said, 
With William Law's serious caul on her 

head), 
It would blow as the obstinate breeze did 

when by a 
Like decree of her father died Iphigenia; 
At first he declared he himself would be 

blowed 
Ere his conscience with such a foul crime 

he would load, 
But the thought, coming oft, grew less dark 

than before, 
And he mused, as each creditor knocked at 

his door, 
If this were but done they would dun me no 

more; 
I told Philothea his struggles and doubts, 
And how he considered the ins and the outs 
Of the visions he had, and the dreadful 

dyspepsy, 
How he went to the seer that lives at Po'- 

keepsie, 
How the seer advised him to sleep on it 

first, 



And to read his big volume in case of the 

worst, 
And further advised he should pay him five 

dollars 
For writing $um, $fum, on his wristbands 

and collars; 
Three years and ten days these dark words 

he had studied 
When the daughter was missed, and the 

aloe had budded; 
I told how he watched it grow large and 

more large, 
And wondered how much for the show he 

should charge, — 
She had listened with utter indifference to 

this, till 
I told how it bloomed, and, discharging its 

pistil 
With an aim the Eumenides dictated, shot 
The botanical filicide dead on the spot; 
It had blown, but he reaped not his horrible 

gains, 
For it blew with such force as to blow out 

his brains, 
And the crime was blown also, because on 

the wad, 
Which was paper, was writ ' Visitation of 

God,' 
As well as a thrilling account of the deed 
Which the coroner kindly allowed me to 

read. 

" Well, my friend took this story up 
just, to be sure, 

As one might a poor foundling that 's laid 
at one's door; 

She combed it and washed it and clothed it 
and fed it, 

And as if 't were her own child most ten- 
derly bred it, 

Laid the scene (of the legend, I mean) far 
away a- 

-mong the green vales underneath Hima- 
laya, 

And by artist-like touches, laid on here 
and there, 

Made the whole thing so touching, I 
frankly declare 

I have read it all thrice, and, perhaps I am 
weak, 

But I found every time there were tears on 
my cheek. 

" The pole, science tells us, the magnet 
controls, 



142 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



But she is a magnet to emigrant Poles, 

And folks with a mission that nobody 
knows 

Throng thickly about her as bees round a 
rose ; 

She can fill up the carets in such, make 
their scope 

Converge to some focus of rational hope, 

And, with sympathies fresh as the morn- 
ing, their gall 

Can transmute into honey, — but this is 
not all; 

Not only for those she has solace, oh 
say, 

Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broad- 
way, 

Who cl ingest, with all that is left of thee 
human, 

To the last slender spar from the wreck of 
the woman, 

Hast thou not found one shore where those 
tired drooping feet 

Could reach firm mother-earth, one full 
heart on whose beat 

The soothed head in silence reposing could 
hear 

The chimes of far childhood throb back on 
the ear ? 

Ah, there 's many a beam from the foun- 
tain of day 

That, to reach us unclouded, must pass, on 
its way, 

Through the soul of a woman, and hers is 
wide ope 

To the influence of Heaven as the blue 
eyes of Hope; 

Yes, a great heart is hers, one that dares 
to go in 

To the prison, the slave-hut, the alleys of 
sin, 

And to bring into each, or to find there, 
some line 

Of the never completely out-trampled di- 
vine; 

If her heart at high floods swamps her 
brain now and then, 

'T is but richer for that when the tide ebbs 
agen, 

As, after old Nile has subsided, his plain 

Overflows with a second broad deluge of 
grain ; 

What a wealth would it bring to the nar- 
row and sour 

Could they be as a Child but for one little 
hour ! 



" What ! Irving ? thrice welcome, warm 
heart and fine brain, 

You bring back the happiest spirit from 
Spain, 

And the gravest sweet humor, that ever 
were there 

Since Cervantes met death in his gentle 
despair; 

Nay, don't be embarrassed, nor look so be- 
seeching, 

I sha'n't run directly against my own 
preaching, 

And, having just laughed at their Raphaels 
and Dantes, 

Go to setting you up beside matchless Cer- 
vantes ; 

But allow me to speak what I honestly 

To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick 

Steele, 
Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill, 
With the whole of that partnership's stock 

and good-will, 
Mix well, and while stirring, hum o'er, as 

a spell, 
The fine old English Gentleman, simmer it 

well, 
Sweeten just to your own private liking, 

then strain, 
That only the finest and clearest remain, 
Let it stand out of doors till a soul it re- 
ceives 
From the warm lazy sun loitering down 

through green leaves, 
And you '11 find a choice nature, not wholly 

deserving 
A name either English or Yankee, — just 

Irving. 

" There goes, — but stet nominis umbra, 

— his name 
You '11 be glad enough, some day or other, 

to claim, 
And will all crowd about him and swear 

that you knew him 
If some English critic should chance to re- 
view him. 
The old porcos ante ne projiciatis 
Margaritas, for him you have verified 

gratis ; 
What matters his name ? Why, it may be 

Sylvester, 
Judd, Junior, or Junius, Ulysses, or Nestor, 
For aught / know or care; 't is enough 

that I look 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



U3 



On the author of 'Margaret,' the first 

Yankee book 
With the soul of Down East in % and things 

farther East, 
As far as the threshold of morning, at 

least, 
Where awaits the fair dawn of the simple 

and true, 
Of the day that comes slowly to make all 

things new. 
'T has a smack of pine woods, of bare field 

and bteak hill, 
Such as only the breed of the Mayflower 

could till; 
The Puritan 's shown in it, tough to the 

core, 
Such as prayed, smiting Agag on red Mar- 

ston Moor: 
With an unwilling humor, half choked by 

the drouth 
In brown hollows about the inhospitable 

mouth; 
With a soul full of poetry, though it has 

qualms 
About finding a happiness out of the 

Psalms; 
Full of tenderness, too, though it shrinks 

in the dark, 
Hamadryad-like, under the coarse, shaggy 

bark; 
That sees visions, knows wrestlings of God 

with the Will, 
And has its own Sinais and thunderings 

still." 

Here, "Forgive me, Apollo," I cried, 

" while I pour 
My heart out to my birthplace: O loved 

more and more 
Dear Bay state, from whose rocky bosom 

thy sons 
Should suck milk, strong-will-giving, brave, 

such as runs 
In the veins of old Greylock — who is it 

that dares 
Call thee pedler, a soul wrapped in bank- 
books and shares ? 
It is false ! She 's a Poet ! I see, as I 

write, 
Along the far railroad the steam-snake 

glide white, 
The cataract-throb of her mill-hearts I 

hear, 
The swift strokes of trip-hammers weary 

my ear, 



Sledges ring upon anvils, through logs the 

saw screams, 
Blocks swing to their place, beetles drive 

home the beams: — 
It is songs such as these that she croons to 

the din 
Of her fast-flying shuttles, year out and 

year in, 
While from earth's farthest corner there 

comes not a breeze 
But wafts her the buzz of her gold-glean- 
ing bees: 
What though those horn hands have as yet 

found small time 
For painting and sculpture and music and 

rhyme ? 
These will come in due order; the need 

that pressed sorest 
Was to vanquish the seasons, the ocean, 

the forest, 
To bridle and harness the rivers, the steam, 
Making those whirl her mill-wheels, this 

tug in her team, 
To vassalize old tyrant Winter, and make 
Him delve surlily for her on river and 

lake ; — 
When this New World was parted, she 

strove not to shirk 
Her lot in the heirdom, the tough, silent 

Work, 
The hero-share ever from Herakles down 
To Odin, the Earth's iron sceptre and 

crown : 
Yes, thou dear, noble Mother ! if ever 

men's praise 
Could be claimed for creating heroical lays, 
Thou hast won it; if ever the laurel divine 
Crowned the Maker and Builder, that glory 

is thine ! 
Thy songs are right epic, they tell how this 

rude 
Rock-rib of our earth here was tamed and 

subdued; 
Thou hast written them plain on the face 

of the planet 
In brave, deathless letters of iron and 

granite ; 
Thou hast printed them deep for all time ; 

they are set 
From the same runic type-fount and al- 
phabet 
With thy stout Berkshire hills and the 

arms of thy Bay, — 
They are staves from the burly old May- 
flower lay. 



144 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



If the drones of the Old World, in queru- 
lous ease, 

Ask thy Art and thy Letters, point proudly 
to these, 

Or, if they deny these are Letters and Art, 

Toil on with the same old invincible heart; 

Thou art rearing the pedestal broad-based 
and grand 

Whereon the fair shapes of the Artist shall 
stand, 

And creating, through labors undaunted 
and long, 

The theme for all Sculpture and Painting 
and Song ! 

" But my good mother Baystate wants 

no praise of mine, 
She learned from her mother a precept di- 
vine 
About something that butters no parsnips, 

her forte 
In another direction lies, work is her sport 
(Though she '11 curtsey and set her cap 

straight, that she will, 
If you talk about Plymouth and red 

Bunker's hill). 
Dear, notable good wife ! by this time of 

night, 
Her hearth is swept neatly, her fire burn- 
ing bright, 
And she sits in a chair (of home plan and 

make) rocking, 
Musing much, all the while, as she darns 

on a stocking, 
Whether turkeys will come pretty high 

next Thanksgiving, 
Whether flour '11 be so dear, for, as sure as 

she 's living, 
She will use rye-and-injun then, whether 

the pig 
By this time ain't got pretty tolerable big, 
And whether to sell it outright will be 

best, 
Or to smoke hams and shoulders and salt 

down the rest, — 
At this minute, she 'd swop all my verses, 

ah, cruel ! 
For the last patent stove that is saving of 

So I '11 just let Apollo go on, for his phiz 
Shows I 've kept him awaiting too long as 
it is." 

"If our friend, there, who seems a re- 
porter, is done 



With his burst of emotion, why, I will go 

on," 
Said Apollo; some smiled, and, indeed, I 

must own 
There was something sarcastic, perhaps, in 

his tone ; — 

"There's Holmes, who is matchless 

among you for wit; 
A Ley den- jar always full-charged, from 

which flit 
The electrical tingles of hit after hit; 
In long poems 't is painful sometimes, and 

invites 
A thought of the way the new Telegraph 

writes, 
Which pricks down its little sharp sentences 

spitefully 
As if you got more than you 'd title to 

rightfully, 
And you find yourself hoping its wild 

father Lightning 
Would flame in for a second and give you 

a fright'ning. 
He has perfect sway of what I call a sham 

metre, 
But many admire it, the English pentame- 
ter, 
And Campbell, I think, wrote most com- 
monly worse, 
With less nerve, swing, and fire in the 

same kind of verse, 
Nor e'er achieved aught in 't so worthy of 

praise 
As the tribute of Holmes to the grand 

Marseillaise. 
You went crazy last year over Bulwer's 

New Timon ; — 
Why, if B-, to the day of his dying, should 

rhyme on, 
Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon 

tomes, 
He could ne'er reach the best point and 

vigor of Holmes. 
His are just the fine hands, too, to weave 

you a lyric 
Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with 

satiric 
In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the 

toes 
That are trodden upon are your own or your 



" There is Lowell, who 's striving Par- 
nassus to climb 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



!45 



With a whole bale of isms tied together 

with rhyme, 
He might get on alone, spite of brambles 

and boulders, 
But he can't with that bundle he has on his 

shoulders, 
The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh 

reaching 
Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing 

and preaching; 
His lyre has some chords that would ring 

pretty well, 
But he 'd rather by half make a drum of 

the shell, 
And rattle away till he 's old as Methusalem, 
At the head of a march to the last new 

Jerusalem. 

" There goes Halleck, whose Fanny 's a 

pseudo Don Juan, 
With the wickedness out that gave salt to 

the true one, 
He 's a wit, though, I hear, of the very first 

order, 
And once made a pun on the words soft 

Recorder; 
More than this, he 's a very great poet, I 'm 

told, 
And has had his works published in crimson 

and gold, 
With something they call 'Illustrations,' 

to wit, 
Like those with which Chapman obscured 

Holy Writ, 1 
Which are said to illustrate, because, as I 

view it, 
Like lucus a non, they precisely don't do it ; 
Let a man who can write what himself 

understands 
Keep clear, if he can, of designing men's 

hands, 
Who bury the sense, if there 's any worth 

having, 
And then very honestly call it engraving. 
But, to quit badinage, which there is n't 

much wit in, 
Halleck 's better, I doubt not, than all he 

has written; 
In his verse a clear glimpse you will fre- 
quently find, 
If not of a great, of a fortunate mind, 
Which contrives to be true to its natural 

loves 

1 (Cuts rightly called wooden, as all must admit.) 



In a world of back-offices, ledgers, and 

stoves. 
When his heart breaks away from the 

brokers and banks, 
And kneels in his own private shrine to give 

thanks, 
There 's a genial manliness in him that 

earns 
Our sincerest respect (read, for instance, 

his ' Burns '), 
And we can't but regret (seek excuse where 

we may) 
That so much of a man has been peddled 



" But what 's that ? a mass-meeting ? 

No, there come in lots 
The American Bulwers, Disraelis, and 

Scotts, 
And" in short the American everything elses, 
Each charging the others with envies and 

jealousies; — 
By the way, 't is a fact that displays what 

profusions 
Of all kinds of greatness bless free institu- 
tions, 
That while the Old World has produced 

barely eight 
Of such poets as all men agree to call great, 
And of other great characters hardly a 

score 
(One might safely say less than that rather 

than more), 
With you every year a whole crop is be- 
gotten, 
They're as much of a staple as corn is, or 

cotton ; 
Why, there 's scarcely a huddle of log-huts 

and shanties 
That has not brought forth its own Miltons 

and Dantes; 
I myself know ten Byrons, one Coleridge, 

three Shelley s, 
Two Raphaels, six Titians (I think), one 

Apelles, 
Leonardos and Rubenses plenty as lichens, 
One (but that one is plenty) American 

Dickens, 
A whole flock of Lambs, any number of 

Tennysons, — 
In short, if a man has the luck to have any 

sons, 
He may feel pretty certain that one out of 

twain 
Will be some very great person over again. 



146 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



There is one inconvenience in all this, which 
lies 

In the fact that by contrast we estimate 
size, 1 

And, where there are none except Titans, 
great stature 

Is only the normal proceeding of nature. 

What puff the strained sails of your praise 
will you furl at, if 

The calmest degree that you know is super- 
lative ? 

At Rome, all whom Charon took into his 
wherry must, 

As a matter of course, be well issimust and 
errimust, 

A Greek, too, could feel, while in that fa- 
mous boat he tost, 

That his friends would take care he was 
tarost and corarostf 

And formerly we, as through graveyards 
we past, 

Thought the world went from bad to worst 
fearfully fast; 

Let us glance for a moment, 't is well worth 
the pains, 

And note what an average graveyard con- 
tains; 

There lie levellers levelled, duns done up 
themselves, 

There are booksellers finally laid on their 
shelves, 

Horizontally there lie upright politicians, 

Dose-a-dose with their patients sleep fault- 
less physicians, 

There are slave-drivers quietly whipped 
under ground, 

There bookbinders, done up in boards, are 
fast bound, 

There card-players wait till the last trump 
be played, 

There all the choice spirits get finally laid, 

There the babe that 's unborn is supplied 
with a berth, 

There men without legs get their six feet 
of earth, 

There lawyers repose, each wrapped up in 
his case, 

There seekers of office are sure of a place, 

There defendant and plaintiff get equally 
cast, 

There shoemakers quietly stick to the last, 

1 That is in most cases we do, but not all, 
Past a doubt, there are men who are innately small, 
Such as Blank, who, without being 'minished a tittle, 
Might stand for a type of the Absolute Little. 



There brokers at length become silent as 
stocks, 

There stage-drivers sleep without quitting 
their box, 

And so forth and so forth and so forth and 
so on, 

With this kind of stuff one might endlessly 
go on; 

To come to the point, I may safely assert 
you 

Will find in each yard every cardinal vir- 
tue; 1 

Each has six truest patriots: four discov- 
erers of ether, 

Who never had thought on 't nor mentioned 
it either; 

Ten poets, the greatest who ever wrote 
rhyme: 

Two hundred and forty first men of their 
time: 

One person whose portrait just gave the 
least hint 

Its original had a most horrible squint: 

One critic, most (what do they call it?) re- 
flective, 

Who never had used the phrase ob- or sub- 
jective : 

Forty fathers of Freedom, of whom twenty 
bred 

Their sons for the rice-swamps, at so inucn 
a head, 

And their daughters for — faugh ! thirty 
mothers of Gracchi: 

Non-resistants who gave many a spiritual 
blackeye : 

Eight true friends of their kind, one of 
whom was a jailer: 

Four captains almost as astounding as 
Taylor: 

Two dozen of Italy's exiles who shoot us his 

Kaisership daily, stern pen-and-ink Bru- 
tuses, 

Who, in Yankee back-parlors, with cruci- 
fied smile, 2 

Mount serenely their country's funereal 
pile : 

Ninety-nine Irish heroes, ferocious rebel- 
lers 

'Gainst the Saxon in cis-marine garrets and 
cellars, 

Who shake their dread fists o'er the sea 
and all that, — 

1 (And at this just conclusion will surely arrive, 
That the goodness of earth is more dead than alive.) 

2 Not forgetting their tea and their toast, though, the 

while. 



J 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



i47 



As long as a copper drops into the hat: 
Nine hundred Teutonic republicans stark 
From Vaterland's battle just won — in the 

Park, 
Who the happy profession of martyrdom 

take 
Whenever it gives them a chance at a 

steak: 
Sixty-two second Washingtons : two or 

three Jacksons : 
And so many everythings-else that it racks 

one's 
Poor memory too much to continue the 

list, 
Especially now they no longer exist; — 
I would merely observe that you 've taken 

to giving 
The puffs that belong to the dead to the 

living, 
And that somehow your trump-of-contem- 

porary-doom's tones 
Is tuned after old dedications and tomb- 
stones." 

Here the critic came in and a thistle pre- 
sented — *■ 
I From a frown to a smile the god's features 

relented, 
As he stared at his envoy, who, swelling 

with pride, 
To the god's asking look, nothing daunted, 

replied, — 
" You 're surprised, I suppose, I was absent 

so long, 
But your godship respecting the lilies was 

wrong; 
I hunted the garden from one end to 

t' other, 
And got no reward but vexation and bother, 
Till, tossed out with weeds in a corner to 

wither, 
This one lily I found and made haste to 

bring hither." 

" Did he think I had given him a book to 

review ? 
I ought to have known what the fellow 

would do," 
Muttered Phcebus aside, " for a thistle will 

pass 
Beyond doubt for the queen of all flowers 

with an ass; 

1 Turn back now to page — goodness only knows 
what, 
And take a fresh hold on the thread of my plot. 



He has chosen in just the same way as he 'd 

choose 
His specimens out of the books he reviews; 
And now, as this offers an excellent text, 
I '11 give 'em some brief hints on criticism 

next." 
So, musing a moment, he turned to the 

crowd, 
And, clearing his voice, spoke as follows 

aloud: — 

" My friends, in the happier days of the 

muse, 
We were luckily free from such things as 

reviews ; 
Then naught came between with its fog to 

make clearer 
The heart of the poet to that of his hearer; 
Then the poet brought heaven to the peo- 
ple, and they 
Felt that they, too, were poets in hearing 

his lay; 
Then the poet was prophet, the past in his 

soul 
Precreated the future, both parts of one 

whole ; 
Then for him there was nothing too great 

or too small, 
For one natural deity sanctified all; 
Then the bard owned no clipper and meter 

of moods 
Save the spirit of silence that hovers and 

broods 
O'er the seas and the mountains, the rivers 

and woods; 
He asked not earth's verdict, forgetting the 

clods, 
His soul soared and sang to an audience of 

gods; 
'T was for them that he measured the 

thought and the line, 
And shaped for their vision the perfect 

design, 
With as glorious a foresight, a balance as 

true, 
As swung out the worlds in the infinite blue ; 
Then a glory and greatness invested man's 

heart, 
The universal, which now stands estranged 

and apart, 
In the free individual moulded, was Art ; 
Then the forms of the Artist seemed 

thrilled with desire 
For something as yet unattained, fuller, 

higher, 



148 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 



As once with her lips, lifted hands, and 
eyes listening, 

And her whole upward soul in her counte- 
nance glistening, 

Eurydice stood — like a beacon unfired, 

Which, once touched with flame, will leap 
heav'nward inspired — 

And waited with answering kindle to mark 

The first gleam of Orpheus that pained the 
red Dark. 

Then painting, song, sculpture did more 
than relieve 

The need that men feel to create and be- 
lieve, 

And as, in all beauty, who listens with love 

Hears these words oft repeated — ' beyond 
and above,' 

So these seemed to be but the visible sign 

Of the grasp of the soul after things more 
divine; 

They were ladders the Artist erected to 
climb 

O'er the narrow horizon of space and of 
time, 

And we see there the footsteps by which 
men had gained 

To the one rapturous glimpse of the never- 
attained, 

As shepherds could erst sometimes trace in 
the sod 

The last spurning print of a sky-cleaving 
god. 

" But now, on the poet's dis-privacied 

moods 
With do this and do that the pert critic 

intrudes ; 
While he thinks he 's been barely fulfilling 

his duty 
To interpret 'twixt men and their own sense 

of beauty, 
And has striven, while others sought honor 

or pelf, 
To make his kind happy as he was him- 
self, 
He finds he 's been guilty of horrid offences 
In all kinds of moods, numbers, genders, 

and tenses; 
He 's been ob and sw&jective, what Kettle 

calls Pot, 
Precisely, at all events, what he ought not, 
You have done this, says one judge; done 

that, says another; 
You should have done this, grumbles one ; that, 

says t' other; 



Never mind what he touches, one shrieks 

out Taboo! 
And while he is wondering what he shall do, 
Since each suggests opposite topics for 

song, 
They all shout together you 're right ! and 

you 're wrong ! 

" Nature fits all her children with some- 
thing to do, 

He who would write and can't write can 
surely review, 

Can set up a small booth as critic and sell 
us his 

Petty conceit and his pettier jealousies; 

Thus a lawyer's apprentice, just out of his 
teens, 

Will do for the Jeffrey of six magazines ; 

Having read Johnson's lives of the poets 
half through, 

There 's nothing on earth he 's not compe- 
tent to; 

He reviews with as much nonchalance as he 
whistles, — 

He goes through a book and just picks out 
the thistles; 

It matters not whether he blame or com- 
mend, 

If he 's bad as a foe, he 's far worse as a 
friend: 

Let an author but write what 's above his 
poor scope, 

He goes to work gravely and twists up a 
rope, 

And, inviting the world to see punishment 
done, 

Hangs himself up to bleach in the wind and 
the sun; 

'T is delightful to see, when a man comes 
along 

Who has anything in him peculiar and 
strong, 

Every cockboat that swims clear its fierce 
(pop) gundeck at him, 

And make as he passes its ludicrous Peck 
at him — " 

Here Miranda came up and began, " As 

to that — " 
Apollo at once seized his gloves, cane, and 

hat, 
And, seeing the place getting rapidly 

cleared, 
I too snatched my notes and forthwith 

disappeared. 



THE UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT 



149 



THE UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT 



PART I 

SHOWING HOW HE BUILT HIS HOUSE AND 
HIS WIFE MOVED INTO IT 

My worthy friend, A. Gordon Knott, 
From business snug withdrawn, 

Was much contented with a lot 

That would contain a Tudor cot 

'Twixt twelve feet square of garden-plot, 
And twelve feet more of lawn. 

He had laid business on the shelf 

To give his taste expansion, 
And, since no man, retired with pelf, 

The building mania can shun, 
Knott, being middle-aged himself, 
Resolved to build (unhappy elf!) 

A inediseval mansion. 

He called an architect in counsel; 

" I want," said he, "a — you know 

what, 
(You are a builder, I am Knott,) 
A thing complete from chimney-pot 

Down to the very grounsel; 

Here 's a half-acre of good land; 

Just have it nicely mapped and planned 

And make your workmen drive on; 
Meadow there is, and upland too, 
And I should like a water-view, 

D' you think you could contrive one ? 
(Perhaps the pump and trough would 

do, 
If painted a judicious blue ?) 
The woodland I've attended to;" 
[He meant three pines stuck up askew, 

Two dead ones and a live one.] 

" A pocket-full of rocks 't would take 

To build a house of freestone, 
But then it is not hard to make 

What nowadays is the stone; 
The cunning painter in a trice 
Your house's outside petrifies, 
And people think it very gneiss 

Without inquiring deeper; 

My money never shall be thrown 
Away on such a deal of stone, 

When stone of deal is cheaper." 



And so the greenest of antiques 

Was reared for Knott to dwell in: 
The architect worked hard for weeks 
In venting all his private peaks 
Upon the roof, whose crop of leaks 

Had satisfied Fluellen; 
Whatever anybody had 
Out of the common, good or bad, 

Knott had it all worked well in ; 
A donjon-keep, where clothes might dry, 
A porter's lodge that was a sty, 
A campanile slim and high, 

Too small to hang a bell in ; 
All up and down and here and there, 
With Lord-knows-whats of round and 

square 
Stuck on at random everywhere, — 
It was a house to make one stare, 

All corners and all gables; 
Like dogs let loose upon a bear, 
Ten emulous styles staboyed with care, 
The whole among them seemed to tear, 
And all the oddities to spare 

Were set upon the stables. 

Knott was delighted with a pile 

Approved by fashion's leaders: 
(Only he made the builder smile, 
By asking every little while, 
Why that was called the Twodoor style, 

Which certainly had three doors ?) 
Yet better for this luckless man 
If he had put a downright ban 

Upon the thing in limine; 
For, though to quit affairs his plan, 
Ere many days, poor Knott began 
Perforce accepting draughts, that ran 

All ways — except up chimney; 
The house, though painted stone to mock, 
With nice white lines round every block, 

Some trepidation stood in, 
When tempests (with petrific shock, 
So to speak,) made it really rock, 

Though not a whit less wooden; 
And painted stone, howe'er well done, 
Will not take in the prodigal sun 
Whose beams are never quite at one - 

With our terrestrial lumber; 
So the wood shrank around the knots, 



i5° 



THE UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT 



And gaped in disconcerting spots, 
And there were lots of dots and rots 

And crannies without number, 
Wherethrough, as you may well presume, 
The wind, like water through a flume, 

Came rushing in ecstatic, 
Leaving, in all three floors, no room 

That was not a rheumatic; 
And, what with points and squares and 
rounds 

Grown shaky on their poises, 
The house at nights was full of pounds, 
Thumps, bumps, creaks, scratchings, raps — 

till— "Zounds!" 
Cried Knott, " this goes beyond all bounds; 
I do not deal in tongues and sounds, 
Nor have I let my house and grounds 

To a family of Noyeses! " 

But, though Knott's house was full of 
airs, 

He had but one, — a daughter; 
And, as he owned much stocks and shares, 
Many who wished to render theirs 
Such vain, unsatisfying cares, 
And needed wives to sew their tears, 

In matrimony sought her; 
They vowed her gold they wanted not, 

Their faith would never falter, 
They longed to tie this single Knott 

In the Hymeneal halter; 
So daily at the door they rang, 

Cards for the belle delivering, 
Or in the choir at her they sang, 
Achieving such a rapturous twang 

As set her nerves ashivering. 

Now Knott had quite made up his mind 

That Colonel Jones should have her; 
No beauty he, but oft we find 
Sweet kernels 'neath a roughish rind, 
So hoped his Jenny 'd be resigned 

And make no more palaver ; 
Glanced at the fact that love was blind, 
That girls were ratherish inclined 

To pet their little crosses, 
Then nosologically defined 
The rate at which the system pined 
In those unfortunates who dined 
Upon that metaphoric kind 

Of dish — their own proboscis. 

But she, with many tears and moans, 

Besought him not to mock her, 
Said 't was too much for flesh and bones 



To marry mortgages and loans, 

That fathers' hearts were stocks and stones. 

And that she 'd go, when Mrs. Jones, 

To Davy Jones's locker; 
Then gave her head a little toss 
That said as plain as ever was, 
If men are always at a loss 

Mere womankind to bridle — 
To try the thing on woman cross 

Were fifty times as idle; 
For she a strict resolve had made 

And registered in private, 
That either she would die a maid, 
Or else be Mrs. Doctor Slade, 

If woman could contrive it; 
And, though the wedding-day was set, 

Jenny was more so, rather, 
Declaring, in a pretty pet, 
That, howsoe'er they spread their net, 
She would out-Jennyral them yet, 

The colonel and her father. 

Just at this time the Public's eyes 

Were keenly on the watch, a stir 
Beginning slowly to arise 
About those questions and replies, 
Those raps that unwrapped mysteries 

So rapidly at Rochester, 
And Knott, already nervous grown 
By lying much awake alone, 
And listening, sometimes to a moan, 

And sometimes to a clatter, 
Whene'er the wind at night would rouse 
The gingerbread-work on his house, 
Or when some hasty-tempered mouse, 
Behind the plastering, made a towse 
, About a family matter, 
Began to wonder if his wife, 
A paralytic half her life, 

Which made it more surprising, 
Might not to rule him from her urn, 
Have taken a peripatetic turn 

For want of exorcising. 

This thought, once nestled in his head, 
Erelong contagious grew, and spread 
Infecting all his mind with dread, 
Until at last he lay in bed 
And heard his wife, with well-known tread, 
Entering the kitchen through the shed, 

(Or was 't his fancy, mocking ?) 
Opening the pantry, cutting bread, 
And then (she 'd been some ten years 
dead) 

Closets and drawers unlocking; 






THE UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT 



*5* 



Or, -in his room (his breath grew thick) 
He heard the long-familiar click 
Of slender needles flying quick, 

As if she knit a stocking; 
For whom? — he prayed that years might 
flit 

With pains rheumatic shooting, 
Before those ghostly things she knit 
Upon his unfleshed sole might fit, 
He did not fancy it a bit, 

To stand upon that footing; 
At other times, his frightened hairs 

Above the bedclothes trusting, 
He heard her, full of household cares, 
(No dream entrapped in supper's snares, 
The foal of horrible nightmares, 
But broad awake, as he declares,) 
Go bustling up and down the stairs, 
Or setting back last evening's chairs, 

Or with the poker thrusting 
The raked-up sea-coal's hardened crust — 
And — what ! impossible ! it must ! 
He knew she had returned to dust, 
And yet could scarce his senses trust, 
Hearing her as she poked and fussed 

About the parlor, dusting ! 

Night after night he strove to sleep 

And take his ease in spite of it; 
But still his flesh would chill and creep, 
And, though two night-lamps he might 
keep, 

He could not so make light of it. 
At last, quite desperate, he goes 
And tells his neighbors all his woes, 

Which did but their amount enchance; 
They made such mockery of his fears 
That soon his days were of all jeers, 

His nights of the rueful countenance; 
"I thought most folks," one neighbor 

said, 
" Gave up the ghost when they were 

dead?" 
Another gravely shook his head, 

Adding, " From all we hear, it 's 
Quite plain poor Knott is going mad — 
For how can he at once be sad 

And think he 's full of spirits ? " 
A third declared he knew a knife 

Would cut this Knott much quicker, 
" The surest way to end all strife, 
And lay the spirit of a wife, 

Is just to take and lick her ! " 
A temperance man caught up the word, 
" Ah yes," he groaned, " I 've always heard 



Our poor friend somewhat slanted 
Tow'rd taking liquor overmuch; 
I fear these spirits may be Dutch, 
(A sort of gins, or something such,) 

With which his house is haunted; 
I see the thing as clear as light, — 
If Knott would give up getting tight, 

Naught farther would be wanted: " 
So all his neighbors stood aloof 
And, that the spirits 'neath his roof 
Were not entirely up to proof, 

Unanimously granted. 

Knott knew that cocks and sprites were 

foes, 
And so bought up, Heaven only knows 
How many, for he wanted crows 
To give ghosts caws, as I suppose, 

To think that day was breaking; 
Moreover what he called his park, 
He turned into a kind of ark 
For dogs, because a little bark 
Is a good tonic in the dark, 

If one is given to waking; 
But things went on from bad to worse, 
His curs were nothing but a curse, 

And, what was still more shocking, 
Foul ghosts of living fowl made scoff 
And would not think of going off 

In spite of all his cocking. 

Shanghais, Bucks-counties, Dominiques, 
Malays (that did n't lay for weeks,) 

Polanders, Bantams, Dorkings, 
(Waiving the cost, no trifling ill, 
Since each brought in his little bill,) 
By day or night were never still, 
But every thought of rest would kill 

With cacklings and with quorkings; 
Henry the Eighth of wives got free 

By a way he had of axing; 
But poor Knott's Tudor henery 
Was not so fortunate, and he 

Still found his trouble waxing; 
As for the dogs, the rows they made, 
And how they howled, snarled, barked and 
bayed, 

Beyond all human knowledge is; 
All night, as wide awake as gnats, 
The terriers rumpused after rats, 
Or, just for practice, taught their brats 
To worry cast-off shoes and hats, 
The bull-dogs settled private spats, 
All chased imaginary cats, 
Or raved behind the fence's slats 



152 



THE UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT 



At real ones, or, from their mats, 
With friends, miles off, held pleasant chats, 
Or, like some folks in white cravats, 
Contemptuous of sharps and flats, 

Sat up and sang dogsologies. 
Meanwhile the cats set up a squall, 
And, safe upon the garden-wall, 

All night kept cat-a-walling, 
As if the feline race were all, 
In one wild cataleptic sprawl^ 

Into love's tortures falling. 



PART II 

SHOWING WHAT IS MEANT BY A FLOW 
OF SPIRITS 

At first the ghosts were somewhat shy, 
Coming when none but Knott was nigh, 
And people said 't was all their eye, 
(Or rather his) a flam, the sly 

Digestion's machination: 
Some recommended a wet sheet, 
Some a nice broth of pounded peat, 
Some a cold flat-iron to the feet, 
Some a decoction of lamb's-bleat, 
Some a southwesterly grain of wheat; 
Meat was by some pronounced unmeet, 
Others thought fish most indiscreet, 
And that 't was worse than all to eat 
Of vegetables, sour or sweet, 
(Except, perhaps, the skin of beet,) 

In such a concatenation: 
One quack his button gently plucks 
And murmurs, " Biliary ducks ! " 

Says Knott, " I never ate one ; " 
But all, though brimming full of wrath, 
Homceo, Alio, Hydropath, 
Concurred in this — that t' other's path 

To death's door was the straight one. 
Still, spite of medical advice, 
The ghosts came thicker, and a spice 

Of mischief grew apparent; 
Nor did they only come at night, 
But seemed to fancy broad daylight, 
Till Knott, in horror and affright, 

His unoffending hair rent; 
Whene'er with handkerchief on lap, 
He made his elbow-chair a trap, 
To catch an after-dinner nap, 
The spirits, always on the tap, 
Would make a sudden rap, rap, rap, 
The half-spun cord of sleep to snap, 



(And what is life without its nap 

But threadbareness and mere mishap ?) 

As 't were with a percussion cap 

The trouble's climax capping; 
It seemed a party dried and grim 
Of mummies had come to visit him, 
Each getting off from every limb 

Its multitudinous wrapping; 
Scratchings sometimes the walls ran round, 
The merest penny- weights of sound; 
Sometimes 't was only by the pound 

They carried on their dealing, 
A thumping 'neath the parlor floor, 
Thump-bump-thump-bumping o'er and o'er, 
As if the vegetables in store 
(Quiet and orderly before) 

Were all together peeling; 
You would have thought the thing was 

done 
By the spirit of some son of a gun, 

And that a forty-two-pounder, 
Or that the ghost which made such sounds 
Could be none other than John Pounds, 

Of Ragged Schools the founder. 
Through three gradations of affright, 
The awful noises reached their height; 

At first they knocked nocturnally, 
Then, for some reason, changing quite, 
(As mourners, after six months' flight, 
Turn suddenly from dark to light,) 

Began to knock diurnally, 
And last, combining all their stocks, 

(Scotland was ne'er so full of Knox,) 
Into one Chaos (father of Nox,) 
Node pluit — they showered knocks, 

Ajid knocked, knocked, knocked, eter- 
nally; 
Ever upon the go, like buoys, 
(Wooden sea-urchins,) all Knott's joys, 
They turned to troubles and a noise 

That preyed on him internally. 

Soon they grew wider in their scope ; 
Whenever Knott a door would ope, 
It would ope not, or else elope 
And fly back (curbless as a trope 
Once started down a stanza's slope 
By a bard that gave it too much rope — ) 

Like a clap of thunder slamming; 
And, when kind Jenny brought his hat, 
(She always, when he walked, did that,) 
Just as upon his head it sat, 
Submitting to his settling pat, 
Some unseen hand would jam it flat, 
Or give it such a furious bat 



THE UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT 



153 



That eyes and nose went cramming 
Up out of sight, and consequently, 
As when in life it paddled free, 

His beaver caused much damning; 
If these things seem o'erstrained to be, 
Read the account of Doctor Dee, 
'T is in our college library; 
Read Wesley's circumstantial plea, 
And Mrs. Crowe, more like a bee, 
Sucking the nightshade's honeyed fee, 
And Stilling's Pneumatology; 
Consult Scot, Glanvil, grave Wie- 
rus, and both Mathers; further see, 
Webster, Casaubon, James First's trea- 
tise, a right royal Q. E. D. 
Writ with the moon in perigee, 
Bodin de la Demonomanie — 
(Accent that last line gingerly) 
All full of learning as the sea 
Of fishes, and all disagree, 
Save in Sathanas apage ! 
Or, what will surely put a flea 
In unbelieving ears — with glee, 
Out of a paper (sent to me 
By some friend who forgot to P... 
A... Y... — I use cryptography 
Lest I his vengeful pen should dree — 
HisP...O...S...T...A...G...E...) 

Things to the same effect I cut, 
About the tantrums of a ghost, 
Not more than three weeks since, at most, 

Near Stratford, in Connecticut. 
Knott's Upas daily spread its roots, 
Sent up on all sides livelier shoots, 
And bore more pestilential fruits; 
The ghosts behaved like downright brutes, 
They snipped holes in his Sunday suits, 
Practised all night on octave flutes, 
Put peas (not peace) into his boots, 

Whereof grew corns in season, 
They scotched his sheets, and, what was 

worse, 
Stuck his silk nightcap full of burrs, 
Till he, in language plain and terse, 
(But much unlike a Bible verse,) 

Swore he should lose his reason. 

The tables took to spinning, too, 
Perpetual yarns, and arm-chairs grew 

To prophets and apostles; 
One footstool vowed that only he 
Of law and gospel held the key, 
That teachers of whate'er degree 
To whom opinion bows the knee 



Were n't fit to teach Truth's a b c, 
And were (the whole lot) to a T 

Mere fogies all and fossils; 
A teapoy, late the property 

Of Knox's Aunt Keziah, 
(Whom Jenny most irreverently 
Had nicknamed her aunt-tipathy) 
With tips emphatic claimed to be 

The prophet Jeremiah; 
The tins upon the kitchen-wall, 
Turned tintinnabulators all, 
And things that used to come at call 

For simple household services 
Began to hop and whirl and prance, 
Fit to put out of countenance 
The Commis and Grisettes of France 

Or Turkey's dancing Dervises. 

Of course such doings, far and wide, 
With rumors filled the country-side, 
And (as it is our nation's pride 
To think a Truth not verified 
Till with majorities allied) 
Parties sprung up, affirmed, denied, 
And candidates with questions plied, 
Who, like the circus-riders, tried 
At once both hobbies to bestride, 
And each with his opponent vied 

In being inexplicit. 
Earnest inquirers multiplied; 
Folks, whose tenth cousins lately died, 
Wrote letters long, and Knott replied; 
All who could either walk or ride 
Gathered to wonder or deride, 

And paid the house a visit; 
Horses were to his pine-trees tied, 
Mourners in every corner sighed, 
Widows brought children there that cried, 
Swarms of lean Seekers, eager-eyed, 
(People Knott never could abide,) 
Into each hole and cranny pried 
With strings of questions cut and dried 
From the Devout Inquirer's Guide, 
For the wise spirits to decide — 

As, for example, is it 
True that the damned are fried or boiled ? 
Was the Earth's axis greased or oiled ? 
Who cleaned the moon when it was soiled ? 
How baldness might be cured or foiled ? 

How heal diseased potatoes ? 
Did spirits have the sense of smell ? 
Where would departed spinsters dwell ? 
If the late Zenas Smith were well ? 
If Earth were solid or a shell ? 



154 



THE UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT 



Were spirits fond of Doctor Fell ? 
Did the bull toll Cock-Robin's knell ? 
What remedy would bugs expel ? 
If Paine's invention were a sell ? 
Did spirits by Webster's system spell ? 
Was it a sin to be a belle ? 
Did dancing sentence folks to hell ? 
If so, then where most torture fell ? 

On little toes or great toes ? 
If life's true seat were in the brain ? 
Did Ensign mean to marry Jane ? 
By whom, in fact, was Morgan slain? 
Could matter ever suffer pain ? 
What would take out a cherry-stain ? 
Who picked the pocket of Seth Crane, 
Of Waldo precinct, State of Maine ? 
Was Sir John Franklin sought in vain ? 
Did primitive Christians ever train ? 
What was the family-name of Cain ? 
Them spoons, were they by Betty ta'en ? 
Would earth-worm poultice cure a sprain ? 
Was Socrates so dreadful plain ? 
What teamster guided Charles's wain ? 
Was Uncle Ethan mad or sane, 
And could his will in force remain ? 
If not, what counsel to retain ? 
Did Le Sage steal Gil Bias from Spain ? 
Was Junius writ by Thomas Paine ? 
Were ducks discomforted by rain ? 
How did Britannia rule the main ? 
Was Jonas coming back again ? 
Was vital truth upon the wane ? 
Did ghosts, to scarce folks, drag a chain ? 
Who was our Huldah's chosen swain ? 
Did none have teeth pulled without payin', 

Ere ether was invented ? 
Whether mankind would not agree, 
If the universe were tuned in C ? 
What was it ailed Lucindy's knee ? 
Whether folks eat folks in Feejee ? 
Whether his name would end with T ? 
If Saturn's rings were two or three, 
And what bump in Phrenology 

They truly represented ? 
These problems dark, wherein they groped, 
Wherewith man's reason vainly coped, 
Now that the spirit-world was oped, 
In all humility they hoped 

Would be resolved instanter; 
Each of the miscellaneous rout 
Brought his, or her, own little doubt, 
And wished to pump the spirits out, 
Through his or her own private spout, 

Into his or her decanter. 



PART III 

WHEREIN IT IS SHOWN THAT THE MOST 
ARDENT SPIRITS ARE MORE ORNA- 
MENTAL THAN USEFUL 

Many a speculating wight 
Came by express-trains, day and night, 
To see if Knott would " sell his right," 
Meaning to make the ghosts a sight — 

What they call a " meenaygerie ; " 
One threatened, if he would not " trade," 
His run of custom to invade, 
(He could not these sharp folks persuade 
That he was not, in some way, paid,) 

And stamp him as a plagiary, 
By coming down, at one fell swoop, 
With the ORIGINAL knocking troupe, 

Come recently from Hades, 
Who (for a quarter-dollar heard) 
Would ne'er rap out a hasty word 
Whence any blame might be incurred 

From the most fastidious ladies; 
The late lamented Jesse Soule, 
To stir the ghosts up with a pole 
And be director of the whole, 

Who was engaged the rather 
For the rare merits he 'd combine, 
Having been in the spirit line, 
Which trade he only did resign, 
With general applause, to shine, 
Awful in mail of cotton fine, 

As ghost of Hamlet's father ! 
Another a fair plan reveals 
Never yet hit on, which, he feels, 
To Knott's religious sense appeals — 
" We '11 have your house set up on wheels, 

A speculation pious ; 
For music, we can shortly find 
A barrel-organ that wijl grind 
Psalm-tunes — an instrument designed 
For the New England tour — refined 
From secular drosses, and inclined 
To an unworldly turn, (combined 

With no sectarian bias;) 
Then, travelling by stages slow, 
Under the style of Knott & Co., 
I would accompany the show 
As moral lecturer, the foe 
Of Rationalism; while you could throw 
The rappings in, and make them go 
Strict Puritan principles, you know, 
(How do you make 'em ? with your toe ?) 



THE UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT 



*SS 



And the receipts which thence might 
flow, 

We could divide between us; 
Still more attractions to combine, 
Beside these services of mine, 
I will throw in a very fine 
(It would do nicely for a sign) 

Original Titian's Venus." 
Another offered handsome fees 
If Knott would get Demosthenes 
(Nay, his mere knuckles, for more ease) 
To rap a few short sentences; 
Or if, for want of proper keys, 

His Greek might make confusion, 
Theu just to get a rap from Burke, 
To recommend a little work 

On Public Elocution. 
Meanwhile, the spirits made replies 
To all the reverent whats and whys, 
Resolving doubts of every size, 
And giving seekers grave and wise, 
Who came to know their destinies, 

A rap-turous reception; 
When unbelievers void of grace 
Came to investigate the place, 
(Creatures of Sadducistic race, 
With grovelling intellects and base,) 
They could not find the slightest trace 

To indicate deception ; 
Indeed, it is declared by some 
That spirits (of this sort) are glum, 
Almost, or wholly, deaf and dumb, 
And (out of self-respect) quite mum 
To skeptic natures cold and numb, 
Who of this kind of Kingdom Come 

Have not a just conception: 
True, there were people who demurred 
That, though the raps no doubt were heard 

Both under them and o'er them, 
Yet, somehow, when a search they made, 
They found Miss Jenny sore afraid, 
Or Jenny's lover, Doctor Slade, 
Equally awestruck and dismayed, 
Or Deborah, the chambermaid, 
Whose terrors not to be gainsaid 
In laughs hysteric were displayed, 

Was always there before them; 
This had its due effect with some 
Who straight departed, muttering, Hum! 

Transparent hoax! and Gammon! 
But these were few: believing souls, 
Came, day by day, in larger shoals, 
As the ancients to the windy holes 
'Neath Delphi's tripod brought their doles, 

Or to the shrine of Ammon. 



The spirits seemed exceeding tame, 
Call whom you fancied, and he came; 
The shades august of eldest fame 

You summoned with an awful ease; 
As grosser spirits gurgled out 
From chair and table with a spout, 
In Auerbach's cellar once, to flout 
The senses of the rabble rout, 
Where'er the gimlet twirled about 

Of cunning Mephistopheles, 
So did these spirits seem in store, 
Behind the wainscot or the door, 
Ready to thrill the being's core 
Of every enterprising bore 

With their astounding glamour; 
Whatever ghost one wished to hear, 
By strange coincidence, was near 
To make the past or future clear 

(Sometimes in shocking grammar) 
By raps and taps, now there, now here — 
It seemed as if the spirit queer 
Of some departed auctioneer 
Were doomed to practise by the year 

With the spirit of his hammer: 
Whate'er you asked was answered, yet 
One could not very deeply get 
Into the obliging spirits' debt, 
Because they used the alphabet 

In all communications, 
And new revealings (though sublime) 
Rapped out, one letter at a time, 

With boggles, hesitations, 
Stoppings, beginnings o'er again, 
And getting matters into train, 
Could hardly overload the brain 

With too excessive rations, 
Since just to ask if two and two 
Really make four? or, How d' ye do f 
And get the fit replies thereto 
In the tramundane rat-tat-too, 

Might ask a whole day's patience. 

'T was strange ('mongst other things) to 

find 
In what odd sets the ghosts combined, 

Happy forthwith to thump any 
Piece of intelligence inspired, 
The truth whereof had been inquired 

By some one of the company; 
For instance, Fielding, Mirabeau, 
Orator Henley, Cicero, 
Paley, John Ziska, Marivaux, 
Melancthon, Robertson, Junot, 
Scaliger, Chesterfield, Rousseau, 
Hakluyt, Boccaccio, South, De Foe, 



156 



THE UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT 



Diaz, Josephus, Richard Roe, 

Odin, Arminius, Charles le gros, 

Tiresias, the late James Crow, 

Casabianca, Grose, Prideaux, 

Old Grimes, Young Norval, Swift, Brissot, 

Maimonides, the Chevalier D'O, 

Socrates, Fe'nelon, Job, Stow, 

The inventor of Elixir pro, 

Euripides, Spinoza, Poe, 

Confucius, Hiram Smith, and Fo, 

Came (as it seemed, somewhat de trop) 

With a disembodied Esquimaux, 

To say that it was so and so, 

With Franklin's expedition; 
One testified to ice and snow, 
One that the mercury was low, 
One that his progress was quite slow, 
One that he much desired to go, 
One that the cook had frozen his toe, 
(Dissented from by Dandolo, 
Wordsworth, Cynaegirus, Boileau, 
La Hontan, and Sir Thomas Roe,) 
One saw twelve white bears in a row, 
One saw eleven and a crow, 
With other things we could not know 
(Of great statistic value, though,) 

By our mere mortal vision. 

Sometimes the spirits made mistakes, 
And seemed to play at ducks and drakes 
With bold inquiry's heaviest stakes 

In science or in mystery; 
They knew so little (and that wrong) 
Yet rapped it out so bold and strong, 
One would have said the unnumbered 
throng 

Had been Professors of History; 
What made it odder was, that those 
Who, you would naturally suppose, 
Could solve a question, if they chose, 
As easily as count their toes, 

Were just the ones that blundered; 
One day, Ulysses happening down, 
A reader of Sir Thomas Browne 

And who (with him) had wondered 
What song it was the Sirens sang, 
Asked the shrewd Ithacan — bang ! hang ! 
With this response the chamber rang, 

" I guess it was Old Hundred." 
And Franklin, being asked to name 
The reason why the lightning came, 

Replied, " Because it thundered." 

On one sole point the ghosts agreed, 
One fearful point, than which, indeed, 



Nothing could seem absurder; 
Poor Colonel Jones they all abused 
And finally downright accused 

The poor old man of murder; 
'T was thus ; by dreadful raps was shown 
Some spirit's longing to make known 
A bloody fact, which he alone 
Was privy to, (such ghosts more prone 

In Earth's affairs to meddle are;) 
Who are you ? with awe-stricken looks, 
All ask: his airy knuckles he crooks, 
And raps, " I was Eliab Snooks, 

That used to be a pedler; 
Some on ye still are on my books ! " 
Whereat, to inconspicuous nooks; 
(More fearing this than common spooks,) 

Shrank each indebted meddler; 
Further the vengeful ghost declared 
That while his earthly life was spared, 
About the country he had fared, 

A duly licensed follower 
Of that much - wandering trade that 

wins 
Slow profit from the sale of tins 

And various kinds of hollow- ware; 
That Colonel Jones enticed him in, 
Pretending that he wanted tin, 
There slew him with a rolling-pin, 
Hid him in a potato-bin, 

And (the same night) him ferried 
Across Great Pond to t' other shore, 
And there, on land of Widow Moore, 
Just where you turn to Larkin's store, 

Under a rock him buried; 
Some friends (who happened to be by) 
He called upon to testify 
That what he said was not a lie, 

And that he did not stir this 
Foul matter, out of any spite 
But from a simple love of right; — 

Which statements the Nine Worthies, 
Rabbi Akiba, Charlemagne, 
Seth, Colley Cibber, General Wayne, 
Cambyses, Tasso, Tubal-Cain, 
The owner of a castle in Spain, 
Jehanghire, and the Widow of Nain, 
(The friends aforesaid,) made more plain 

And by loud raps attested; 
To the same purport testified 
Plato, John Wilkes, and Colonel Pride 
Who knew said Snooks before he died, 

Had in his wares invested, 
Thought him entitled to belief 
And freely could concur, in brief, 

In everything the rest did. 



THE UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT 



*57 



Eliab this occasion seized, 
(Distinctly here the spirit sneezed,) 
To say that he should ne'er be eased 
Till Jenny married whom she pleased, 

Free from all checks and urgin's, 
(This spirit dropt his final g's) 
And that, unless Knott quickly sees 
This done, the spirits to appease, 
They would come back his life to tease, 
As thick as mites in ancient cheese, 
And let his house on an endless lease 
To the ghosts (terrific rappers these 
And veritable Eumenides) 

Of the Eleven Thousand Virgins ! 

Knott was perplexed and shook his head, 
He did not wish his child to wed 

With a suspected murderer, 
(For, true or false, the rumor spread,) 
But as for this roiled life he led, 
" It would not answer," so he said, 

" To have it go no f urderer." 
At last, scarce knowing what it meant, 
Reluctantly he gave consent 
That Jenny, since 't was evident 
That she ivould follow her own bent, 

Should make her own election; 
For that appeared the only way 
These frightful noises to allay 
Which had already turned him gray 

And plunged him in dejection. 

Accordingly, this artless maid 

Her father's ordinance obeyed, 

And, all in whitest crape arrayed, 

(Miss Pulsifer the dresses made 

And wishes here the fact displayed 

That she still carries on the trade, 

The third door south from Bagg's Arcade,) 

A very faint " I do " essayed 

And gave her hand to Hiram Slade, 

From which time forth, the ghosts were 

laid, 
And ne'er gave trouble after; 
But the Selectmen, be it known, 
Dug underneath the aforesaid stone, 
Where the poor pedler's corpse was 

thrown, 
And found thereunder a jaw-bone, 
Though, when the crowner sat thereon, 
He nothing hatched, except alone 
Successive broods of laughter; 
It was a frail and dingy thing, 
In which a grinder or two did cling, 



In color like molasses, 
Which surgeons, called from far and wide, 
Upon the horror to decide, 

Having put on their glasses, 
Reported thus: " To judge by looks, 
These bones, by some queer hooks or 

crooks, 
May have belonged to Mr. Snooks, 
But, as men deepest-read in books 

Are perfectly aware, bones, 
If buried fifty years or so, 
Lose their identity and grow 

From human bones to bare bones." 

Still, if to Jaalam you go down, 
You '11 find two parties in the town, 
One headed by Benaiah Brown, 

And one by Perez Tinkham; 
The first believe the ghosts all through 
And vow that they shall never rue 
The happy chance by which they knew 
That people in Jupiter are blue, 
And very fond of Irish stew, 
Two curious facts which Prince Lee Boo 
Rapped clearly to a chosen few — 

Whereas the others think 'em 
A trick got up by Doctor Slade 
With Deborah the chambermaid 

And that sly cretur Jinny. 
That all the revelations wise, 
At which the Brownites made big eyes, 
Might have been given by Jared Keyes, 

A natural fool and ninny, 
And, last week, did n't Eliab Snooks 
Come back with never better looks, 
As sharp as new-bought mackerel hooks, 

And bright as a new pin, eh ? 
Good Parson Wilbur, too, avers 
(Though to be mixed in parish stirs 
Is worse than handling chestnut-burrs) 
That no case to his mind occurs 
Where spirits ever did converse, 
Save in a kind of guttural Erse, 

(So say the best authorities;) 
And that a charge by raps conveyed 
Should be most scrupulously weighed 

And searched into, before it is 
Made public, since it may give pain 
That cannot soon be cured again, 
And one word may infix a stain 

Which ten cannot gloss over, 
Though speaking for his private part, 
He is rejoiced with all his heart 

Miss Knott missed not her lover. 



i58 



FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM 



FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM 



In the note introducing Fitz Adam's Story, infra p. 411, will be found a brief account of the 
unfinished poem of which this is a fragment. 



I am a man of forty, sirs, a native of East 
Haddam, 

And have some reason to surmise that I 
descend from Adam ; 

But what 's my pedigree to you ? That I 
will soon unravel; 

I 've sucked my Haddam-Eden dry, there- 
fore desire to travel, 

And, as a natural consequence, presume I 
need n't say, 

I wish to write some letters home and have 
those letters p — 

[I spare the word suggestive of those grim 
Next Morns that mount 

Clump, Clump, the stairways of the brain 
with — " Sir, my small account" 

And, after every good we gain — Love, 
Fame, Wealth, Wisdom — still, 

As punctual as a cuckoo clock, hold up their 
little bill, 

The gar cons in our Cafd of Life, by dream- 
ing us forgot — 

Sitting, like Homer's heroes, full and mus- 
ing God knows what, — 

Till they say, bowing, SHI vous plait, voila, 
Messieurs, la note!'] 

I would not hint at this so soon, but in our 
callous day, 

The tollman Debt, who drops his bar across 
the world's highway, 

Great Csesar in mid-march would stop, if 
Caesar could not pay; 

Pilgriming 's dearer than it was : men 
cannot travel now 

Scot-free from Dan to Beersheba upon a 
simple vow; 

Nay, as long back as Bess's time, when 
Walsingham went over 

Ambassador to Cousin France, at Canter- 
bury and Dover 

He was so fleeced by innkeepers that, ere 
he quitted land, 

He wrote to the Prime Minister to take the 
knaves in hand. 

If I with staff and scallop-shell should try 
my way to win, 

Would Bonifaces quarrel as to who should 
take me in ? 



Or would my pilgrim's progress end where 

Bunyan started his on, 
And my grand tour be round and round the 

backyard of a prison ? 
I give you here a saying deep and therefore, 

haply true; 
'T is out of Merlin's prophecies, but quite 

as good as new: 
%\)t question boatf) for men anb meate6 longe 

bobage$ \)t begtnne 
2i;e3 in a not6f)ell, rather 6afoe U;e$ in a ca§e 

of tinne. 
But, though men may not travel now, as in 

the Middle Ages, 
With self-sustaining retinues of little gilt- 
edged pages, 
Yet one may manage pleasantly, where'er 

he likes to roam, 
By sending his small pages (at so much per 

small page) home; 
And if a staff and scallop-shell won't serve 

so well as then, 
Our outlay is about as small — just paper, 

ink, and pen. 
Be thankful ! Humbugs never die, more 

than the wandering Jew; 
Bankrupt, they publish their own deaths, 

slink for a while from view, 
Then take an alias, change the sign, and the 

old trade renew; 
Indeed, 't is wondrous how each Age, 

though laughing at the Past, 
Insists on having its tight shoe made on the 

same old last; 
How it is sure its system would break up 

at once without 
The bunion which it will believe hereditary 

gout; 
How it takes all its swans for geese, nay, 

stranger yet and sadder, 
Sees in its treadmill's fruitless jog a heaven- 
ward Jacob 's-ladder, 
Shouts, Lo, the Shining Heights are reached ! 

One moment more aspire 1 
Trots into cramps its poor, dear legs, gets 

never an inch the higher, 
And like the others, ends with pipe and 

mug beside the fire. 



FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM 



r 59 



There, 'tween each doze, it whiffs and sips 

and watches with a sneer 
The green recruits that trudge and sweat 

where it had swinked whilere, 
And sighs to think this soon spent zeal 

should be in simple truth 
The only interval between old Fogyhood 

and Youth: 
" Well," thus it muses, " well, what odds ? 

'T is not for us to warn; 
'T will be the same when we are dead, and 

was ere we were born; 
Without the Treadmill, too, how grind our 

store of winter's corn ? 
Had we no stock, nor twelve per cent, re- 
ceived from Treadmill shares, 
We might . . . but these poor devils at 

last will get our easy-chairs. 
High aims and hopes have great rewards, 

they, too, serene and snug, 
Shall one day have their soothing pipe and 

their enlivening mug; 
From Adam, empty-handed Youth hath 

always heard the hum 
Of Good Times Coming, and will hear un- 
til the last day come ; 
Young ears hear forward, old ones back, 

and, while the earth rolls on, 
Full-handed Eld shall hear recede the steps 

of Good Times Gone ; 
Ah what a cackle we set up whene'er an 

egg was laid ! 
Cack-cack-cack-cackle ! rang around, the 

scratch for worms was stayed, 
Cut-cut-ca-dah-cut ! from this egg the com- 
ing cock shall stalk ! 
The great New Era dawns, the age of 

Deeds and not of Talk ! 
And every stupid hen of us hugged close 

his egg of chalk, 
Thought, — sure, I feel life stir within, 

each day with greater strength, 
When lo, the chick ! from former chicks 

he differed not a jot, 
But grew and crew and scratched and 

went, like those before, to pot ! " 
So muse the dim Emeriti, and, mournful 

though it be, 
I must confess a kindred thought hath 

sometimes come to me, 
Who, though but just of forty turned, have 

heard the rumorous fame 
Of nine and ninety Coming Men, all — 

coming till they came. 



Pure Mephistopheles all this ? the vulgar 

nature jeers ? 
Good friend, while I was writing it, my 

eyes were dim with tears; 
Thrice happy he who cannot see, or who 

his eyes can shut, 
Life's deepest sorrow is contained in that 

small word there — But ! 



We 're pretty nearly crazy here with 

change and go ahead, 
With flinging our caught bird away for 

two i' th' bush instead, 
With butting 'gainst the wall which we 

declare shall be a portal, 
And questioning Deeps that never yet have 

oped their lips to mortal; 
We 're growing pale and hollow-eyed, and 

out of all condition, 
With mediums and prophetic chairs, and 

crickets with a mission, 
(The most astounding oracles since Ba- 
laam's donkey spoke, — 
'T would seem our furniture was all of 

Dodonean oak.) 
Make but the public laugh, be sure 't will 

take you to be somebody; 
'T will wrench its button from your clutch, 

my densely earnest glum body ; 
'T is good, this noble earnestness, good in 

its place, but why 
Make great Achilles' shield the pan to 

bake a penny pie ? 
Why, when we have a kitchen-range, insist 

that we shall stop, 
And bore clear down to central fires to 

broil our daily chop ? 
Excalibur and Durandart are swords of 

price, but then 
Why draw them sternly when you wish to 

trim your nails or pen ? 
Small gulf between the ape and man; you 

bridge it with your staff; 
But it will be impassable until the ape can 

laugh; — 
No, no, be common now and then, be sen- 
sible, be funny, 
And, as Siberians bait their traps for bears 

with pots of honey, 
From which ere they '11 withdraw their 

snouts, they'll suffer many a club- 
lick, 
So bait your moral figure-of -fours to catch 

the Orson public. 



i6o 



FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM 



Look how the dead leaves melt their way 
down through deep-drifted snow; 

They take the sun-warmth down with them 
— pearls could not conquer so; 

There is a moral here, you see; if you 
would preach, you must 

Steep all your truths in sunshine would 
you have them pierce the crust; 

Brave Jeremiah, you are grand and ter- 
rible, a sign 

And wonder, but were never quite a popu- 
lar divine ; 

Fancy the figure you would cut among the 
nuts and wine ! 

I, on occasion, too, could preach, but hold 
it wiser far 

To give the public sermons it will take with 
its cigar, 

And morals fugitive, and vague as are 
these smoke-wreaths light 

In which ... I trace ... a ... let me 
see — bless me ! 't is out of sight. 

There are some goodish things at sea; for 

instance, one can feel 
A grandeur in the silent man forever at the 

wheel, 
That bit of two-legged intellect, that par- 
ticle of drill, 
Who the huge floundering hulk inspires with 

reason, brain, and will, 
And makes the ship, though skies are black 

and headwinds whistle loud, 
Obey her conscience there which feels the 

loadstar through the cloud; 
And when by lusty western gales the full- 
sailed barque is hurled, 
Towards the great moon which, setting on 

the silent underworld, 
Rounds luridly up to look on ours, and 

shoots a broadening line, 
Of palpitant light from crest to crest across 

the ridgy brine, 
Then from the bows look back and feel a 

thrill that never stales, 
In that full-bosomed, swan-white pomp of 

onward-yearning sails; 
Ah, when dear cousin Bull laments that 

you can't make a poem, 
Take him aboard a clipper - ship, young 

Jonathan, and show him 
A work of art that in its grace and grandeur 

may compare 
With any thing that any race has fashioned 

any where; 



'T is not a statue, grumbles John; nay, if 

you come to that, 
We think of Hyde Park Corner, and con- 
cede you beat us flat 
With your equestrian statue to a Nose and 

a Cocked hat; 
But 't is not a cathedral; well, e'en that we 

will allow, 
Both statues and cathedrals are anachro- 
nistic now; 
Your minsters, coz, the monuments of men 

who conquered you, 
You 'd sell a bargain, if we 'd take the deans 

and chapters too; 
No; mortal men build nowadays, as always 

heretofore, 
Good temples to the gods which they in 

very truth adore; 
The shepherds of this Broker Age, with all 

their willing flocks, 
Although they bow to stones no more, do 

bend the knee to stocks, 
And churches can't be beautiful though 

crowded, floor and gallery, 
If people worship preacher, and if preacher 

worship salary; 
'T is well to look things in the face, the god 

o' the modern universe, 
Hermes, cares naught for halls of art and 

libraries of puny verse, 
If they don't sell, he notes them thus upon 

his ledger — say, per 
Contra to a loss of so much stone, best 

Russia duck and paper; 
And, after all, about this Art men talk a 

deal of fudge, 
Each nation has its path marked out, from 

which it must not budge; 
The Romans had as little art as Noah in his 

ark, 
Yet somehow on this globe contrived to 

make an epic mark; 
Religion, painting, sculpture, song — for 

these they ran up jolly ticks 
With Greece and Egypt, but they were great 

artists in their politics, 
And if we make no minsters, John, nor 

epics, yet the Fates 
Are not entirely deaf to men who can build 

ships and states; 
The arts are never pioneers, but men have 

strength and health 
Who, called on suddenly, can improvise a 

commonwealth, 



AN ORIENTAL APOLOGUE 



161 



Nay, can more easily go on and frame them 

by the dozen, 
Than you can make a dinner-speech, dear 

sympathizing cousin: 
And, though our restless Jonathan have not 

your graver bent, sure he 
Does represent this hand-to-mouth, pert, 

rapid, nineteenth century; 
This is the Age of Scramble; men move 

faster than they did 
When they pried up the imperial Past's 

deep-dusted coffin-lid, 
Searching for scrolls of precedent; the wire- 
leashed lightning now 
Replaces Delphos — men don't leave the 

steamer for the scow; 
What public, were they new to-day, would 

ever stop to read 
The Iliad, the Shanameh, or the Nibelun- 

genlied ? 



Their public 's gone, the artist Greek, the 

lettered Shah, the hairy Graf — 
Folio and plesiosaur sleep well; we weary 

o'er a paragraph; 
The mind moves planet-like no more, it 

fizzes, cracks, and bustles; 
From end to end with journals dry the land 

o'ershadowed rustles, 
As with dead leaves a winter-beech, and, 

with their breath-roused jars 
Amused, we care not if they hide the eternal 

skies and stars; 
Down to the general level of the Board of 

Brokers sinking, 
The Age takes in the newspapers, or, to say 

sooth unshrinking, 
The newspapers take in the Age, and 

stocks do all the thinking. 



AN ORIENTAL APOLOGUE 



Somewhere in India, upon a time, 
(Read it not Injah, or you spoil the verse,) 
There dwelt two saints whose privilege 
sublime 
It was to sit and watch the world grow 
worse, 
Their only care (in that delicious clime) 
At proper intervals to pray and curse; 
Pracrit the dialect each prudent brother 
Used for himself, Damnonian for the 
other. 

One half the time of each was spent in 
praying 
For blessings on his own unworthy head, 
The other half in fearfully portraying 
Where certain folks would go when they 
were dead; 
This system of exchanges — there 's no 
saying 
To what more solid barter 't would have led, 
But that a river, vext with boils and 

swellings 
At rainy times, kept peace between their 
dwellings. 

So they two played at wordy battledore 
And kept a curse forever in the air, 

Flying this way or that from shore to 
shore; 



Nor other labor did this holy pair, 

Clothed and supported from the lavish 
store 
Which crowds lanigerous brought with, 
daily care; 
They toiled not, neither did they spin; 

their bias 
Was tow'rd the harder task of being 
pious. 

Each from his hut rushed six score times 
a day, 
Like a great canon of the Church full- 
rammed 
With cartridge theologic, (so to say,) 
Touched himself off, and then, recoiling, 
slammed 
His hovel's door behind him in a way 
That to his foe said plainly, — you HI be 
damned ; 
And so like Potts and Wainwright, shrill 
and strong 

The two D D'd each other all day 

long. 

One was a dancing Dervise, a Moham- 
medan, 
The other was a Hindoo, a gymnosophist; 

One kept his whatd'yecallit and his Ram- 
adan, 



162 



AN ORIENTAL APOLOGUE 



Laughing to scorn the sacred rites and laws 
of his 
Transfluvial rival, who, in turn, called 
Ahmed an 
Old top, and, as a clincher, shook across a 
fist 
With nails six inches long, yet lifted 

not 
His eyes from off his navel's mystic knot. 

" Who whirls not round six thousand 
times an hour 
Will go," screamed Ahmed, "to the evil 
place ; 
May he eat dirt, and may the dog and 
Giaour 
Defile the graves of him and all his race; 
Allah loves faithful souls and gives them 
power 
To spin till they are purple in the face ; 
Some folks get you know what, but he 

that pure is 
Earns Paradise and ninety thousand hou- 



" Upon the silver mountain, South by 
East, 
Sits Brahma fed upon the sacred bean; 
He loves those men whose nails are still 
increased, 
Who all their lives keep ugly, foul, and 
lean; 
'Tis of his grace that not a bird or beast 
Adorned with claws like mine was ever 
seen; 
The suns and stars' are Brahma's 

thoughts divine, 
Even as these trees I seem to see are 
mine." 

" Thou seem'st to see, indeed ! " roared 
Ahmed back; 
"Were I but once across this plaguy 
stream, 
With a stout sapling in my hand, one 
whack 
On those lank ribs would rid thee of that 
dream ! 
Thy Brahma-blasphemy is ipecac 
To my soul's stomach; couldst thou grasp 
the scheme 
Of true redemption, thou wouldst know 

that Deity 
Whirls by a kind of blessed spontaneity. 



"And this it is which keeps our earth 
here going 
With all the stars." — " Oh, vile ! but 
there 's a place 
Prepared for such; to think of Brahma 
throwing 
Worlds like a juggler's balls up into Space ! 
Why, not so much as a smooth lotos 
blowing 
Is e'er allowed that silence to efface 

Which broods round Brahma, and our 

earth, 't is known, 
Rests on a tortoise, moveless as this 
stone." 

So they kept up their banning amcebsean, 
When suddenly came floating down the 
stream 
A youth whose face like an incarnate 



Glowed, 't was so full of grandeur and of 
gleam; 
" If there be gods, then, doubtless, this 
must be one," 
Thought both at once, and then began to 
scream, 
" Surely, whate'er immortals know, thou 

knowest, 
Decide between us twain before thou 



The youth was drifting in a slim canoe 
Most like a huge white water-lily's petal, 

But neither of our theologians knew 
Whereof 't was made ; whether of heav- 
enly metal 
Seldseen, or of a vast pearl split in two 
And hollowed, was a point they could not 
settle ; 
'T was good debate-seed, though, and 

bore large fruit 
In after years of many a tart dispute. 

There were no wings upon the stranger's 
shoulders, 
And yet he seemed so capable of rising 
That, had he soared like thistledown, 
beholders 
Had thought the circumstance noways sur- 
prising; 
Enough that he remained, and, when the 
scolders 
Hailed him as umpire in their vocal prize- 
ring, 



AN ORIENTAL APOLOGUE 



163 



The painter of his boat he lightly threw 
Around a lotos-stem, and brought her to. 

The strange youth had a look as if he 
might 
Have trod far planets where the atmosphere 
(Of nobler temper) steeps the face with 
light, 
Just as our skins are tanned and freckled 
here; 
His air was that of a cosmopolite 
In the wide universe from sphere to sphere ; 
Perhaps he was (his face had such grave 

beauty) 
An officer of Saturn's guards off duty. 

Both saints began to unfold their tales at 
once, 
Both wished their tales, like simial ones, 
prehensile, 
That they might seize his ear; fool! 
knave ! and dunce ! 
Flew zigzag back and forth, like strokes of 
pencil 
In a child's fingers; voluble as duns, 
They jabbered like the stones on that 
immense hill 
In the Arabian Nights ; until the stranger 
Began to think his ear-drums in some 
danger. 

In general those who nothing have to say 
Contrive to spend the longest time in doing 
it; 
They turn and vary it in every way, 
Hashing it, stewing it, mincing it, ragouting 
it; 
Sometimes they keep it purposely at bay, 
Then let it slip to be again pursuing it; 
They drone it, groan it, whisper it and 

shout it, 
Refute it, flout it, swear to 't, prove it, 
doubt it. 

Our saints had practised for some thirty 
years ; 
Their talk, beginning with a single stem, 
Spread like a banyan, sending down live 
piers, 
Colonies of digression, and, in them, 

Germs of yet new dispersion; once by the 
ears, 
They could convey damnation in a hem, 
And blow the pinch of premise-priming off 
Long syllogistic batteries, with a cough. 



Each had a theory that the human ear 
A providential tunnel was, which led 
To a huge vacuum (and surely here 
They showed some knowledge of the gen- 
eral head,) 
For cant to be decanted through, a mere 
Auricular canal or mill-race fed 

All day and night, in sunshine and in 

shower, 
From their vast heads of milk-and-water- 
power. 

The present being a peculiar case, 
Each with unwonted zeal the other scouted, 
Put his spurred hobby through its every 
pace, 
Pished, pshawed, poohed, horribled, bahed, 
jeered, sneered, flouted, 
Sniffed, nonsensed, infideled, fudged, with 
his face 
Looked scorn too nicely shaded to be 
shouted, 
And, with each inch of person and of 

vesture, 
Contrived to hint some most disdainful 
gesture. 

At length, when their breath's end was 
come about, 
And both could now and then just gasp 
" impostor ! " 
Holding their heads thrust menacingly 
out, 
As staggering cocks keep up their fighting 
posture, 
The stranger smiled and said, " Beyond a 
doubt 
'T is fortunate, my friends, that you have 
lost your 
United parts of speech, or it had been 
Impossible for me to get between. 

" Produce ! says Nature, — what have you 
produced ? 
A new strait- waistcoat for the human mind; 
Are you not limbed, nerved, jointed, 
arteried, juiced, 
As other men? yet, faithless to your 
kind, 
Rather like noxious insects you are used 
To puncture life's fair fruit, beneath the 
rind 
Laying your creed-eggs, whence in time 

there spring 
Consumers new to eat and buzz and sting. 



164 



AN ORIENTAL APOLOGUE 



" Work! you have no conception how 
't will sweeten 
Your views of Life and Nature, God and 
Man; 
Had you been forced to earn what you 
have eaten, 
Your heaven had shown a less dyspeptic 
plan; 
At present your whole function is to eat 
ten 
And talk ten times as rapidly as you can; 
Were your shape true to cosmogonic laws, 
You would be nothing but a pair of jaws. 

" Of all the useless beings in creation 
The earth could spare most easily you 
bakers 
Of little clay gods, formed in shape and 
fashion 
Precisely in the image of their makers ; 
Why, it would almost move a saint to 
passion, 
To see these blind and deaf, the hourly 
breakers 
Of God's own image in their brother 

men, 
Set themselves up to tell the how, where, 
when, 

" Of God's existence ; one's digestion 's 
worse — 
So makes a god of vengeance and of blood ; 

Another, — but no matter, they reverse 
Creation's plan, out of their own vile mud 
Pat up a god, and burn, drown, hang, or 
curse 
Whoever worships not ; each keeps his stud 
Of texts which wait with saddle on and 

bridle 
To hunt down atheists to their ugly idol. 

" This, I perceive, has been your occupa- 
tion; 
You should have been more usefully em- 
ployed; 
All men are bound to earn their daily 
ration, 
Where States make not that primal contract 
void 
By cramps and limits ; simple devastation 
Is the worm's task, and what he has de- 
stroyed 
His monument; creating is man's work 
And that, too, something more than mist 
and murk." 



So having said, the youth was seen no 

more, 
And straightway our sage Brahmin, the 

philosopher, 
Cried, "That was aimed at thee, thou 

endless bore, 
Idle and useless as the growth of moss over 
A rotting tree-trunk! " " I would square 

that score 
Full soon," replied the Dervise, " could I 

cross over 
And catch thee by the beard. Thy nails 

I 'd trim 
And make thee work, as was advised by 

him." 

" Work ? Am I not at work from morn 
till night 
Sounding the deeps of oracles umbilical 
Which for man's guidance never come to 
light, 
With all their various aptitudes, until I 
call?" 
" And I, do I not twirl from left to right 
For conscience' sake ? Is that no work ? 
Thou silly gull, 
He had thee in his eye ; 't was Gabriel 
Sent to reward my faith, I know him 
well." 



"'Twas Vishnu, thou vile whirligig!" 
and so 
The good old quarrel was begun anew; 
One would have sworn the sky was black 
as sloe, 
Had but the other dared to call it blue; 
Nor were the followers who fed them 
slow 
To treat each other with their curses, too, 
Each hating t' other (moves it tears or 

laughter ?) 
Because he thought him sure of hell here- 
after. 

At last some genius built a bridge of boats 
Over the stream, and Ahmed's zealots filed 

Across, upon a mission to (cut throats 
And) spread religion pure and undefiled ; 
They sowed the propagandist's wildest 
oats, 
Cutting off all, down to the smallest child, 
And came back, giving thanks for such 

fat mercies, 
To find their harvest gone past prayers 
or curses. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



165 



All gone except their saint's religious 
hops, 
"Which he kept up with more than common 
flourish; 
But these, however satisfying crops 
For the inner man, were not enough to 
nourish 
The body politic, which quickly drops 
Reserve in such sad junctures, and turns 
currish; 
So Ahmed soon got cursed for all the 

famine 
Where'er the popular voice could edge a 
damn in. 

At first he pledged a miracle quite boldly, 
And, for a day or two, they growled and 
waited ; 
But, finding that this kind of manna 
coldly 
Sat on their stomachs, they erelong berated 
The saint for still persisting in that old 
lie, 
Till soon the whole machine of saintship 
grated, 
Ran slow, creaked, stopped, and, wishing 
him in Tophet, 



They gathered strength enough to stone 
the prophet. 

Some stronger ones contrived (by eating 
leather, 
Their weaker friends, and one thing or 
another) 
The winter months of scarcity to weather; 
Among these was the late saint's younger 
brother, 
Who, in the spring, collecting them to- 
gether, 
Persuaded them that Ahmed's holy pother 
Had wrought in their behalf, and that 

the place 
Of Saint should be continued to his race. 

Accordingly, 't was settled on the spot 
That Allah favored that peculiar breed; 

Beside, as all were satisfied, 't would not 
Be quite respectable to have the need 

Of public spiritual food forgot; 
And so the tribe, with proper forms, de- 
creed 

That he, and, failing him, his next of 
kin, 

Forever for the people's good should spin. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



FIRST SERIES 



In a letter, June 16, 1846, to Mr. Sydney 
Howard Gay, then editor of the Anti-Slavery 
Standard, Lowell wrote : " I mean to send all 
the poems I write (on whatever subject) first to 
the Standard, except such arrows as I may 
deem it better to shoot from the ambushment 
of the Courier, because the old enemy offers 
me a fairer mark from that quarter. . . . You 
will find a squib of mine in this week's Courier. 
I wish it to continue anonymous, for I wish 
slavery to think it has as many enemies as pos- 
sible. If I may judge from the number of 
persons who have asked me if I wrote it, I 
have struck the old hulk of the Public between 
wind and water." This was the first of the 
Biglow Papers. The scheme of anonymity 
was preserved through the first series, and as 
Lowell wrote forty years later to Thomas 
Hughes (Letters, II. 334) : " I had great fun out 
of it. I have often wished that I coidd have 
had a literary nom de guerre, and kept my own 
to myself. I should n't have cared a doit what 



happened to him." But as appears from the 
letter given above, the satire was readily fa- 
thered on Lowell, and many of the subsequent 
papers were published in the Standard. " As 
for Hosea," he wrote to his friend Mr. Charles 
F. Briggs, November 13, 1847, " I am sorry 
that I began by making him such a detestable 
speller. There is no fun in bad spelling of 
itself, but only where the misspelling suggests 
something else which is droll per se. You see 
I am getting him out of it gradually. I mean 
to altogether. Parson Wilbur is about to pro- 
pose a subscription for fitting him for college, 
and has already commenced his education. 
Perhaps you like the last best, because it is 
more personal and has therefore more direct- 
ness of purpose. But I confess I think that 
Birdofredom's attempt to explain the Anglo- 
Saxon theory is the best thing yet, except 
Parson Wilbur's letter in the Courier of last 
Saturday." The series ran at intervals for 
about eighteen months, when the papers were 



i66 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



collected into a volume. Lowell's letters, writ- 
ten when lie was busy over the equipment of 
the book, show him in high spirits over his 
jeu oV esprit. "I am going," he writes to Mr. 
Briggs, " to indulge all my fun in a volume of 
H. Biglow's verses which I am preparing, and 
which I shall edit under the character of the 
Rev. Mr. Wilbur. I hope you saw Mr. B.'s 
last production, which I consider his best 
hitherto. I am going to include in the volume 
an essay of the reverend gentleman on the 
Yankee dialect, and on dialects in general, and 
on everything else, and also an attempt at a 
complete natural history of the Humbug — 
which I think I shall write in Latin. The 
book will purport to be published at Jaalam 
(Mr. B.'s native place), and will be printed on 
brownish paper, with those little head and tail- 
pieces which used to adorn our earlier publica- 
tions — such as hives, scrolls, urns, and the 
like." 

This was written on the last day of the 
year 1847, but it was not until September of 
the next year that the actual volume got un- 
der way ; for meanwhile Lowell's original de- 
sign had been modified, and he turned the 
fun he had been devising for the volume of 
mock poetry into the collection of his Biglow 
Papers. The essay on the Yankee dialect by 
Mr. Wilbur was included, but it was not till 
the second series was published, nearly twenty 
years later, that there appeared, the scholarly 
introduction, not now as a piece of affected 
pedantry, but as the serious and delightful 
study of the author delivered in his own voice. 

At the beginning of September, 1848, Lowell 
wrote to Mr. Gay : " I am as busy as I can 
be with Mr. Biglow' s poems, of which I have 
got between twenty and thirty pages already 
printed. It is the hardest book to print that 
ever I had anything to do with, and what with 
corrections and Mr. Wilbur's annotations, 
keeps me more employed than I care to be." 
Later in the same month he wrote to the same 
correspondent that he was " wearied out with 
Mr. Biglow and his tiresome (though wholly 
respectable) friend Mr. Wilbur." His notes 
continue to show the pressure under which he 
worked until the book was published, the 
middle of November. The first edition (1500) 
was gone in a week, and the book and its au- 
thor became famous. 

A little more than ten years afterward an 
English edition was to appear, and Thomas 
Hughes, who had it in charge, wrote to Lowell 
asking for a new preface. The answer, a por- 
tion of which is here given, is interesting as 
showing how the book appeared as a whole to 
its author when he was in the midst of his Uni- 
versity service and had made a name for him- 
self as scholar and critic as well as poet. 



Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 13, 1859. 
My Dear Sib : — I have put off from time 
to time writing to you, because I hardly knew 
what to write. To say simply that I liked 
your writings would have been pleasant enough 
(though that would have given me no claim 
upon you that was not shared by all the world), 
but I find it particularly hard, to write any- 
thing about a book of my own. It has been a 
particular satisfaction to me to hear, now and 
then, some friendly voice from the old mother- 
island say " Well done " of the Biglow Papers ; 
for, to say the truth, I like them myself, and. 
when I was reading them over for a new edi- 
tion, a year or two ago, could not help laugh- 
ing. But then as I laughed I found myself 
asking, "Are these yours? How did you 
make them?" Friendly people say to me 
sometimes, "Write us more Biglow Papers" 
and I have even been simple enough to try, 
only to find that I could not. This has helped 
to persuade me that the book was a genuine 
growth, and not a manufacture, and that, there- 
fore, I had an honest right to be pleased, with- 
out blushing if people liked it. But then, this 
very fact makes it rather hard to write an in- 
troduction to it. All I can say is that the book 
was thar ; how it came is more than I can tell. 
I cannot, like the great Goethe, deliberately 
imagine what would have been a proper Ent- 
stehungsweise for my book, and then assume it 
as a fact. And as for an historical preface, I 
find that quite as hard after now twelve years 
of more cloistered interests and studies that 
have alienated me very much from contempo- 
rary politics. I only know that I believed our 
war with Mexico (though we had as just ground 
for it as a strong nation ever has against a 
weak one) to be essentially a war of false pre- 
tences, and that it would result in widening 
the boundaries and so prolonging the life of 
slavery. Believing that it is the manifest des- 
tiny of the English race to occupy this whole 
continent, and to display there that practical 
understanding in matters of government and 
colonization which no other race has given such 
proof of possessing since the Romans, I hated 
to see a noble hope evaporated into a lying 
phrase to sweeten the foul breath of dema- 
gogues. Leaving the sin of it to God, I be- 
lieved, and still believe, that slavery is the 
Achilles-heel of our polity ; that it is a tempo- 
rary and false supremacy of the white races, 
sure to destroy that supremacy at last, because 
an enslaved people always prove themselves 
of more enduring fibre than their enslavers, 
as not suffering from the social vices sure to 
be engendered by oppression in the governing 
class. Against these and many other things I 
thought all honest men should protest. I was 
born and bred in the country, and the dialect 






THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



167 



was homely to me. I tried my first Biglow 
paper in a newspaper, and found that it had a 
great run. ' So I wrote the others from time to 
time during the year which followed, always 
very rapidly, and sometimes (as with " What 
Mr. Kobinson thinks " ) at one sitting. 

When I came to collect them and publish 
them in a volume, I conceived my parson-editor, 
with his pedantry and verbosity, his amiable 
vanity and superiority to the verses he was 
editing, as a fitting artistic background and 
foil. It gave me the chance, too, of glan- 
cing obliquely at many things which were be- 
yond the horizon of my other characters. I 
was told afterwards that my Parson Wilbur 
was only Jedediah Cleishbotham over again, 
and I dare say it may be so ; but I drew him 
from the life as well as I could, and for the 
authentic reasons I have mentioned. I confess 
that I am proud of the recognition the book 
has received in England, because it seems to 
prove that, despite its intense provincialism, 
there is a general truth to human nature in it 
which justifies its having been written. 



But life is too short to write about one's 
self in, and you see that I cannot make a suit- 
able preface. I would rather have something 
of this kind : " It could not but be gratifying 
to the writer of the Biglow Papers that Mr. 
Trubner should deem it worth his while to 
publish an edition of them in England. It 
gives him a particular pleasure that the au- 
thor of Tom Brown's School Bays should 
have consented to see the work through the 
press, for the remarkable favor with which that 
work was received on both sides of the At- 
lantic proved that all speakers of the English 
tongue, however differing in other respects, 
agree wholly in their admiration for sound- 
ness of head and heart and manliness of char- 
acter." 

Now do not think this is " Buncombe." 

The first series as here given retains the 
elaborate apparatus attached to the poem, in 
the order given in the book when first pub- 
lished by George Nichols, Cambridge. 



NOTICES OF AN INDEPENDENT 
PRESS 

[I have observed, reader (bene- or male- 
volent, as it may happen), that it is customary 
to append to the second editions of books, and 
to the second works of authors, short sentences 
commendatory of the first, under the title of 
Notices of the Press. These, I have been given 
to understand, are procurable at certain estab- 
lished rates, payment being made either in 
money or advertising patronage by the pub- 
lisher, or by an adequate outlay of servility 
on the part of the author. Considering these 
things with myself, and also that such notices 
are neither intended, nor generally believed, to 
convey any real opinions, being a purely cere- 
monial accompaniment of literature, and re- 
sembling certificates to the virtues of various 
morbiferal panaceas, I conceived that it would 
be not only more economical to prepare a 
sufficient number of such myself, but also 
more immediately subservient to the end in 
view to prefix them to this our primary edition 
rather than to await the contingency of a 
second, when they would seem to be of small 
utility. To delay attaching the bobs until the 
second attempt at flying the kite would indi- 
cate but a slender experience in that useful 
art. Neither has it escaped my notice, nor 
failed to afford me matter of reflection, that, 
when a circus or a caravan is about to visit 
Jaalam, the initial step is to send forward 
large and highly ornamented bills of per- 
formance, to be hung in the bar-room and the 



post-office. These having been sufficiently 
gazed at, and beginning to lose their attrac- 
tiveness except for the flies, and, truly, the 
boys also (in whom I find it impossible to re- 
press, even during school-hours, certain oral 
and telegraphic communications concerning 
the expected show), upon some fine morning 
the band enters in a gayly painted wagon, or 
triumphal chariot, and with noisy advertise- 
ment, by means of brass, wood, and sheepskin, 
makes the circuit of our startled village 
streets. Then, as the exciting sounds draw 
nearer and nearer, do I desiderate those eyes 
of Aristarchus, " whose looks were as a breech- 
ing to a boy." Then do I perceive, with vain 
regret of wasted opportunities, the advantage 
of a pancratie or pantechnic education, since 
he is most reverenced by my little subjects 
who can throw the cleanest summerset or walk 
most securely upon the revolving cask. The 
story of the Pied Piper becomes for the first 
time credible to me (albeit confirmed by the 
Hameliners dating their legal instruments from 
the period of his exit), as I behold how those 
strains, without pretence of magical potency, 
bewitch the pupillary legs, nor leave to the 
pedagogic an entire self-control. For these 
reasons, lest my kingly prerogative should 
suffer diminution, I prorogue my restless com- 
mons, whom I follow into the street, chiefly 
lest some mischief may chance befall them. 
After the manner of such a band, I send for- 
ward the following notices of domestic manu- 
facture, to make brazen proclamation, not un- 
conscious of the advantage which will accrue, 



i68 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



if our little craft, cymbula sutilis, shall seem to 
leave port with a clipping breeze, and to carry, 
in nautical phrase, a bone in her mouth. 
Nevertheless, I have chosen, as being more 
equitable, to prepare some also sufficiently 
objurgatory, that readers of every taste may 
find a dish to their palate. I have modelled 
them upon actually existing specimens, pre- 
served in my own cabinet of natural curiosities. 
One, in particular, I had copied with tolerable 
exactness from a notice of one of my own dis- 
courses, which, from its superior tone and ap- 
pearance of vast experience, I concluded to 
nave been written by a man at least three 
hundred years of age, though I recollected no 
existing instance of such antediluvian long- 
evity. Nevertheless, I afterwards discovered 
the author to be a young gentleman preparing 
for the ministry under the direction of one of 
my brethren in a neighboring town, and whom 
I had once instinctively corrected in a Latin 
quantity. But this I have been forced to omit, 
from its too great length. — H. W. ] 



From the Universal Littery Universe. 

Full of passages which rivet the attention of 
the reader. . . . Under a rustic garb, senti- 
ments are conveyed which should be committed 
to the memory and engraven on the heart of 
every moral and social being. . . . We consider 
this a unique performance. . . . We hope to see 
it soon introduced into our common schools. . . . 
Mr. Wilbur has performed his duties as editor 
with excellent taste and judgment. . . . This 
is a vein which we hope to see successfully 
prosecuted. . . . We hail the appearance of 
this work as a long stride toward the formation 
of a purely aboriginal, indigenous, native, and 
American literature. We rejoice to meet with 
an author national enough to break away from 
the slavish deference, too common among us, 
to English grammar and orthography. . . . 
Where all is so good, we are at a loss how to 
make extracts. . . . On the whole, we may call 
it a volume which no library, pretending to en- 
tire completeness, should fail to place upon its 
shelves. 



From the Higginbottomopolis Snapping-turtle. 
A collection of the merest balderdash and 
doggerel that it was ever our bad fortune to 
lay eyes on. The author is a vulgar buffoon, 
and the editor a talkative, tedious old fool. 
We use strong language, but should any of our 
readers peruse the book, (from which calamity 
Heaven preserve them !) they will find reasons 
for it thick _ as the leaves of Vallumbrozer, or, 
to use a still more expressive comparison, as 
the combined heads of author and editor. The 
work is wretchedly got up. . . . We should 
like to know how much British gold was 
pocketed by this libeller of our country and her 
purest patriots. 



From the Oldfogrumville Mentor. 

We have not had time to do more .than glance 
through this handsomely printed volume, but 
the name of its respectable editor, the Rev. 
Mr. Wilbur, of Jaalam, will afford a sufficient 
guaranty for the worth of its contents. . . . 
The paper is white, the type clear, and the vol- 
ume of a convenient and attractive size. . . . 
In reading this elegantly executed work, it has 
seemed to us that a passage or two might have 
been retrenched with advantage, and that the 
general style of diction was susceptible of a 
higher polish. ... On the whole, we may 
safely leave the ungrateful task of criticism to 
the reader. We will barely suggest, that in 
volumes intended, as this is, for the illustration 
of a provincial dialect and turns of expression, 
a dash of humor or satire might be thrown in 
with advantage. . . . The work is admirably 
got up. . . . This work will form an appropri- 
ate ornament to the centre-table. It is beauti- 
fully printed, on paper of an excellent quality. 



From the Dekay Bulwark. 

We should be wanting in our duty as the 
conductor of that tremendous engine, a public 
press, as an American, and as a man, did we 
allow such an opportunity as is presented to us 
by " The Biglow Papers " to pass by without 
entering our earnest protest against such at- 
tempts (now, alas ! too common) at demoraliz- 
ing the public sentiment. Under a wretched 
mask of stupid drollery, slavery, war, the social 
glass, and, in short, all the valuable and time- 
honored institutions justly dear to our common 
humanity and especially to republicans, are 
made the butt of coarse and senseless ribaldry 
by this low-minded scribbler. It is time that 
the respectable and religious portion of our 
community should be aroused to the alarming 
inroads of foreign Jacobinism, sansculottism, 
and infidelity. It is a fearful proof of the 
wide-spread nature of this contagion, that these 
secret stabs at religion and virtue are given 
from under the cloak (credite, posteri !) of a 
clergyman. It is a mournful spectacle indeed 
to the patriot and Christian to see liberality 
and new ideas (falsely so called, — they are as 
old as Eden) invading the sacred precincts of 
the pulpit. ... On the whole, we consider 
this volume as one of the first shocking results 
which we predicted would spring out of the 
late French " Revolution" (!). 



From the Bungtown Copper and Comprehensive 
Tocsin (a try weakly family journal). 
Altogether an admirable work. . . . Full of hu- 
mor, boisterous, but delicate, — of wit withering 
and scorching, yet combined with a pathos cool 
as morning dew, — of satire ponderous as the 
mace of Richard, yet keen as the seymitar of 
Saladin. . . . A work full of "mountain-mirth," 
mischievous as Puck, and lightsome as ArieL 
. . . We know not whether to admire most the 
genial, fresh, and discursive concinnity of the 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



169 



author, or his playful fancy, weird imagination, 
and compass of style, at once both objective and 
subjective. . . . We might indulge in some crit- 
icisms, but, were the author other than he is, 
he would be a different being. As it is, he has 
a wonderful pose, which flits from flower to 
flower, and bears the reader irresistibly along 
on its eagle pinions (like Ganymede) to the 
" highest heaven of invention." . . . We love a 
book so purely objective. . . . Many of his pic- 
tures of natural scenery have an extraordinary 
subjective clearness and fidelity. ... In fine, we 
consider this as one of the most extraordinary 
volumes of this or any age. We know of no 
English author who could have written it. It 
a work to which the proud genius of our 
country, standing with one foot on the Aroos- 
took and the other on the Rio Grande, and 
holding up the star-spangled banner amid the 
vreck of matter and the crush of worlds, may 
point with bewildering scorn of the punier 
efforts of enslaved Europe. . . . We hope soon 
to encounter our author among those higher 
walks of literature in which he is evidently ca- 
pable of achieving enduring fame. Already we 
should be inclined to assign him a high position 
in the bright galaxy of our American bards. 



From the Saltriver Pilot and Flag of Freedom. 

A volume in bad grammar and worse taste. 
. . . While the pieces here collected were con- 
fined to their appropriate sphere in the corners 
of obscure newspapers, we considered them 
wholly beneath contempt, but, as the author 
has chosen to come forward in this public man- 
ner, he must expect the lash he so richly merits. 
. . . Contemptible slanders. . . . Vilest Billings- 
gate. . . . Has raked all the gutters of our 
language. . . . The most pure, upright, and 
consistent politicians not safe from his malignant 
venom. . . . General Cushing comes in for a 
share of his vile calumnies. . . . The Reverend 
Homer Wilbur is a disgrace to his cloth. . . . 



From the World-Harmonic- JE 'olian- Attachment. 

Speech is silver : silence is golden. No utter- 
ance more Orphic than this. While, therefore, 
as highest author, we reverence him whose 
works continue heroically unwritten, we have 
also our hopeful word for those who with pen 
(from wing of goose loud-cackling, or seraph 
God-commissioned) record the thing that is re- 
vealed. . . . Under mask of quaintest irony, we 
detect here the deep, storm-tost (nigh ship- 
wracked) soul, thunder-scarred, semi-articulate, 
but ever climbing hopefully toward the peaceful 
nmits of an Infinite Sorrow. . . . Yes, thou 
or, forlorn Hosea, with Hebrew fire-flaming 
soul in thee, for thee also this life of ours has 
Dot been without its aspects of heavenliest pity 
and laughingest mirth. Conceivable enough ! 
Through coarse Thersites-cloak, we have reve- 
lation of the heart, wild-glowing, world-clasping, 



that is in him. Bravely he grapples with the 
life-problem as it presents itself to him, un- 
combed, shaggy, careless of the *' nicer proprie- 
ties," inexpert of "elegant diction," yet with 
voice audible enough to whoso hath ears, up 
there on the gravelly side-hills, or down on the 
splashy, indiarubber-like salt-marshes of native 
Jaalam. To this soul also the Necessity of Creat- 
ing somewhat has unveiled its awful front. If 
not CEdipuses and Eleetras and Alcestises, then 
in God's name Birdofredum Sawins ! These also 
shall get born into the world, and filch (if so 
need) a Zingali subsistence therein, these lank, 
omnivorous Yankees of his. He shall paint the 
Seen, since the Unseen will not sit to him. Yet 
in him also are Nibelungen-lays, and Iliads, and 
Ulysses-wanderings, and Divine Comedies, — if 
only once he could come at them ! Therein lies 
much, nay all ; for what truly is this which we 
name All, but that which we do not possess ? . . . 
Glimpses also are given us of an old father Eze- 
kiel, not without paternal pride, as is the wont 
of such. A brown, parchment-hided old man of 
the geoponic or bucolic species, gray-eyed, we 
fancy, queued perhaps, with much weather- 
cunning and plentiful September-gale memories, 
bidding fair in good time to become the Oldest 
Inhabitant. After such hasty apparition, he 
vanishes and is seen no more. ... Of "Rev. 
Homer Wilbur, A. M., Pastor of the First 
Church in Jaalam," we have small care to 
speak here. Spare touch in him of his Melesi- 
genes namesake, save, haply, the — blindness ! 
A tolerably caliginose, nephelegeretous elderly 
gentleman, with infinite faculty of sermonizing, 
muscularized by long practice and excellent di- 
gestive apparatus, and, for the rest, well-mean- 
ing enough, and with small private illumina- 
tions (somewhat tallowy, it is to be feared) of 
his own. To him, there, " Pastor of the First 
Church in Jaalam," our Hosea presents himself 
as a quite inexplicable Sphinx-riddle. A rich 
poverty of Latin and Greek, — so far is clear 
enough, even to eyes peering myopic through 
horn-lensed editorial spectacles, — but naught 
farther ? O purblind, well-meaning, altogether 
fuscous Melesigenes- Wilbur, there are things in 
him incommunicable by stroke of birch ! Did 
it ever enter that old bewildered head of thine 
that there was the Possibility of the Infinite in 
him ? To thee, quite wingless (and even feather- 
less) biped, has not so much even as a dream of 
wings ever come ? " Talented young parish- 
ioner " ? Among the Arts whereof thou art Ma- 
gister, does that of seeing happen to be one ? 
Unhappy Artium Magister ! Somehow a Ne- 
mean Hon, fulvous, torrid-eyed, dry-nursed in 
broad-howling sand-wildernesses of a sufficiently 
rare spirit-Libya (it may be supposed) has got 
whelped among the sheep. Already he stands 
wild-glaring, with feet clutching the ground as 
with oak-roots, gathering for a Remus-spring 
over the walls of thy little fold. In Heaven's 
name, go not near him with that fly bite crook 
of thine ! In good time, thou painful preacher, 
thou wilt go to the appointed place of departed 
Artillery- Election Sermons, Right -Hands of 



170 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



Fellowship, and Results of Councils, gathered 
to thy spiritual fathers with much Latin of the 
Epitaphial sort ; thou, too, shalt have thy re- 
ward ; hut on him the Eumenides have looked, 
not Xantippes of the pit, snake-tressed, finger- 
threatening, hut radiantly calm as on antique 
gems ; for him paws impatient the winged 
courser of the gods, champing unwelcome bit ; 
him the starry deeps, the empyrean glooms, and 
far-flashing splendors await. 

From the Onion Grove Phoenix. 

A talented young townsman of ours, recently 
returned from a Continental tour, and who is 
already favorably known to our readers by his 
sprightly letters from abroad which have graced 
our columns, called at our office yesterday. We 
learn from him, that, having enjoyed the distin- 
guished privilege, while in Germany, of an in- 
troduction to the celebrated Von Humbug, he 
took the opportunity to present that eminent 
man with a copy of the " Biglow Papers." The 
next morning he received the following note, 
which he has kindly furnished us for publica- 
tion. We prefer to print it verbatim, knowing 
that our readers will readily forgive the few 
errors into which the illustrious writer has 
fallen, through ignorance of our language. 

" High- Worthy Mister ! 

"I shall also now especially happy starve, be- 
cause I have more or less a work one those abo- 
riginal Red-Men seen in which have I so deaf 
an interest ever taken full-worthy on the self 
shelf with our Gottsched to be upset. 

"Pardon my in the English-speech un-prac- 
tice ! Von Humbug . ' ' 

He also sent with the above note a copy of his 
famous work on "Cosmetics," to be presented 
to Mr. Biglow; but this was taken from our 
friend by the English custom-house officers, 
probably through a petty national spite. No 
doubt, it has by this time found its way into the 
British Museum. We trust this outrage will be 
exposed in all our American papers. We shall 
do our best to bring it to the notice of the State 
Department. Our numerous readers will share 
in the pleasure we experience at seeing our 
young and vigorous national literature thus 
encouragingly patted on the head by this vener- 
able and world-renowned German. We love to 
see these reciprocations of good-feeling between 
the different branches of the great Anglo-Saxon 
race. 

[The following genuine " notice " having 
met my eye, I gladly insert a portion of it here, 
the more especially as it contains one of Mr. 
Biglow's poems not elsewhere printed. — H. W.] 

From the Jaalam Independent Blunderbuss. 

. . . But, while we lament to see our young 
townsman thus mingling in the heated contests 
of party polities, we think we detect in him the 



presence of talents which, if properly directed, 
might give an innocent pleasure to many. As 
a proof that he is competent to the production 
of other kinds of poetry, we copy for our read- 
ers a short fragment of a pastoral by him, the 
manuscript of which was loaned us by a friend. 
The title of it is " The Courtin'." 

Zekle crep' up, quite unbeknown, 
An' peeked in thru the winder, 

An' there sot Huldy all alone, 
'ith no one nigh to hender. 

Agin' the chimbly crooknecks hung, 

An' in amongst 'em rusted 
The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young 

Fetched back frum Concord busted. 

The wannut logs shot sparkles out 
Towards the pootiest, bless her ! 

An' leetle fires danced all about 
The ehiny on the dresser. 

The very room, coz she wuz in, 
Looked warm frum floor to ceilin', 

An' she looked full ez rosy agin 
Ez th' apples she wuz peelin'. 

She heerd a foot an' knowed it, tu, 

Araspin' on the scraper, — 
All ways to once her feelins flew 

Like sparks in burnt-up paper. 

He kin' o' l'itered on the mat, 

Some doubtfle o' the seekle ; 
His heart kep' goin' pitypat, 

But hern went pity Zekle. 

An' yet she gin her cheer a jerk 
Ez though she wished him f urder, 

An' on her apples kep' to work 
Ez ef a wager spurred her. 

" You want to see my Pa, I spose ? " 
" Wall, no ; I come designin' — " 

" To see my Ma ? She 's sprinklin' clo'es 
Agin to-morrow's i'nin'." 

He stood a spell on one foot fust, 

Then stood a spell on tother, 
An' on which one he felt the wust 

He could n't ha' told ye, nuther. 

Sez he, " I 'd better call agin ; " 
Sez she, "Think likely, Mister ;" 

The last word pricked him like a pin, 
An' — wal, he up and kist her. 

When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, 

Huldy sot pale ez ashes, 
All kind o' smily round the lips 

An' teary round the lashes. 

Her blood riz quick, though, like the tide 

Down to the Bay o' Fundy, 
An' all I know is they wuz cried 

In meetin', come nex Sunday. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



171 



Satis multis sese emptores futuros libri pro- 
fessis, Georgius Nichols, Cantabrigiensis, opus 
emittet de parte gravi sed adhue neglecta his- 
toriae naturalis, cum titulo sequente, videlicet : 

Conatus ad Delineationem naturalem nonnihil 
perfectiorem Scarabcei Bombilatoris, vulgo died 
Humbug, ab Homero Wilbuk, Artium Magis- 
tro, Societatis historico-naturalis Jaalaraensis 
Praeside (Secretario, Socioque (eheu !) singulo), 
multarumque aliarum Societatum eruditarum 
(sive ineruditarum) tarn domesticarum quam 
transmarinarum Socio — f orsitan f uturo. 



PROEMIUM 

Lectori Benevolo S. 

Toga scholastica nondum deposita, quum 
systemata varia entomologica, a viris ejus sei- 
entiae-cultoribus studiosissimis suruma diligen- 
tia aedificata, penitus indagassem, non fuit quin 
luetuose omnibus in iis, quamvis aliter laude 
dignissimis, hiatum magni momenti pereipe- 
rem. Tunc, nescio quo motu superiore impul- 
sus, aut qua captus dulcedine operis, ad eum 
implendum (Curtius alter) me solemniter de- 
vovi. Nee ab isto labore, dai/moviccs imposito, 
abstinui antequam tractatulum suffieienter in- 
concinnum lingua vernacula perfeceram. Inde, 
juveniliter tumef actus, et barathro ineptiae t&v 
f3i&\ioira)\a>i' (necnon " Publici Legentis " ) nus- 
quam explorato, me composuisse quod quasi 
placentas praefervidas (ut sic dieam) homines 
ingurgitarent eredidi. Sed, quum huic et alio 
bibliopolae MSS. mea submisissem et nihil so- 
lidius responsione valde negativa in Musaaum 
meum retulissem, horror ingens atque miseri- 
cordia, ob crassitudinem Lambertianam in cere- 
bris homunculorum istius muneris ccelesti qua- 
dam ira infixam, me invasere. Extemplo mei 
solius impensis librum edere decrevi, nihil om- 
nino dubitans quin " Mundus Scientificus " (ut 
aiunt) crumenam meam ampliter repleret. 
Nullam, attamen, ex agro illo meo parvulo se- 
getem demessui praeter gaudium vacuum bene 
de Republica merendi. Iste panis meus pretio- 
sus super aquas literarias faeculentas praefiden- 
ter jactus, quasi Harpyiarum quarundam (scili- 
cet bibliopolarum istorum facinorosorum su- 
pradictorum) tactu rancidus, intra perpaucos 
dies mihi domum rediit. Et, quum ipse tali 
victu ali non tolerarem, prinmm in mentem 
venit pistori (typographo nempe) nihilominus 
solvendum esse. Animum non idcirco demisi, 
imo aeque ac pueri naviculas suas penes se lino 
retinent (eo ut e recto cursu delapsas ad ripam 
retrahant), sic ego Argo meam chartaceam 
fluctibus laborantem a quaesitu velleris aurei, 
ipse potius tonsus pelleque exutus, mente solida 
revocavi. Metaphoram ut mutem, boomaran- 



gam meam a scopo aberrantem retraxi, dum 
majore vi, occasione ministrante, adversus For- 
tunam intorquerem. Ast mihi, talia volventi, 
et, sicut Saturnus ille ircuSofiopos, liberos in- 
tellectus mei depascere fidenti, casus miseran- 
dus, nee antea inauditus, supervenit. Nam, ut 
ferunt Scythas pietatis causa et parsimoniae, 
parentes suos mortuos devorasse, sic films hie 
meus primogenitus, Scythis ipsis minus man- 
suetus, patrem vivum totum et calcitrantem ex- 
sorbere enixus est. Nee tamen hae de causa 
sobolem meam esurientem exheredavi. Sed 
f amem istam pro valido testimonio virilitatis 
roborisque potius habui, cibumque ad earn sa- 
tiandam, salva paterna mea carne, petii. Et 
quia bilem illam scaturientem ad aes etiam con- 
coquendum idoneam esse estimabam, unde ass 
alienum, ut minoris pretii, haberem, cireum- 
spexi. Rebus ita se habentibus, ab avunculo 
meo Johanne Doolittle, Armigero, impetravi ut 
pecunias necessarias suppeditaret, ne opus esset 
mihi universitatem relinquendi antequam ad 
gradum primum in artibus pervenissem. Tunc 
ego, salvum f acere patronum meum munificum 
maxime cupiens, omnes libros primaa editionis 
operis mei non venditos una cum privilegio in 
omne aavum ejusdem imprimendi et edendi 
avunculo meo dicto pigneravi. Ex illo die, atro 
lapide notando, curaa vociferantes familias sin- 
gulis annis crescentis eo usque insultabant ut 
nunquam tarn earum pignus e vinculis istis 
aheneis solvere possem. 

Avunculo vero nuper mortuo, quum inter 
alios consanguineos testamenti ejus lectionem 
audiendi causa advenissem, erectis auribus 
verba talia sequentia accepi : " Quoniam per- 
suasum habeo meum dilectum nepotem Home- 
rum, longa et intima rerum angustarum domi 
experientia, aptissimum esse qui divitias tuea- 
tur, beneficenterque ac prudenter iis divinis 
creditis utatur, — ergo, motus hisee cogitationi- 
bus, exque amore meo in ilium magno, do, lego- 
que nepoti caro meo supranominato omnes sin- 
gularesque istas possessiones nee ponderabiles 
nee computabiles meas quae sequuntur, scili- 
cet : quingentos libros quos mihi pigneravit dic- 
tus Homerus, anno lueis 1792, cum privilegio 
edendi et repetendi opus istud ' scientificum ' 
(quod dicunt) suum, si sic elegerit. Tamen 
D. O. M. precor oculos Homeri nepotis mei ita 
aperiat eumque moveat, ut libros istos in biblio- 
theea unius e plurimis castellis suis Hispani- 
ensibus tuto abseondat." 

His verbis (vix credibilibus, auditis, cor 
meum in pectore exsultavit. Deinde, quoniam 
tractatus Anglice scriptus spem auetoris f efel- 
lerat, quippe quum studium Historiae Natura- 
lis in Republica nostra inter f actionis strepitum 
languescat, Latine versum edere statui, et eo 
potius quia nescio quomodo disciplina acade- 
miea et duo diplomata profieiant, nisi quod 



172 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



peritos linguarum omnino mortuarum (et dam- 
nandarum, ut dicebat iste iravovpyos Guiliel- 
rniis Cobbett) nos faciant. 

Et mibi adhuc superstes est tota ilia editio 
prima, quam quasi crepitaeulum per quod 
dentes caninos dentibam retineo. 



OPERIS SPECIMEN 

(Ad exemplum Johannis Physiopkili speciminis 
Monachologice.) 

12. S. B. Militarise Wilbur. Carnifex, Ja- 
blonsk. Profanus, Desfont. 

[Male hancce speeieni Cyclopem Fabrieius 
vocat, ut qui singulo oeulo ad quod sui interest 
distinguitur. Melius vero Isaaeus Outis nullum 
inter S. milit. S. que Belzebul (Fabric. 152) 
discrimen esse defendit.] 

Habitat civitat. Amerie. austral. 

Aureis lineis splendidus; plerumque tamen 
sordidus, utpote lanienas valde frequentans, 
fcetore sanguinis alleetus. Amat quoque in- 
super septa apricari, neque inde, nisi maxima 
conatione detruditur. Candidatus ergo popu- 
lariter vocatus. Caput cristam quasi pennarum 
ostendit. Pro cibo vaeeam publieam callide 
mulget ; abdomen enorme ; f acultas suctus 
haud facile estimanda. Otiosus, f atuus ; f erox 
nihilominus, semperque dimicare paratus. Tor- 
tuose repit. 

Capite spese maxima cum cura dissecto, ne 
illud rudimentum etiam cerebri commune omni- 
bus prope insectis detegere poteram. 

Unam de boc S. milit. rem singularem notavi ; 
nam S. Guineens. (Fabric. 143) servos facit, et 
ideirco a multis summa in reverentia babitus, 
quasi scintillas rationis psene human® demon- 
strans. 

24. S. B. Criticus, Wilbur. Zoilus, Fabric. 
Pygmceus, Carlsbn. 

[Stultissime Johannes Stryx cum S. punctato 
(Fabric. 64-109) confundit. Specimina quam- 
plurima serutationi microscopic® subjeci, nun- 
quam tamen unum ulla indicia puncti cujusvis 
prorsus ostendentem inveni.] 

Praecipue formidolosus, inseetatusque, in 
proxima rima anonyma sese abseondit, we, we, 
creberrime stridens. Ineptus, segnipes. 

Habitat ubique gentium ; in sicco ; nidum 
suum terebratione indefessa sedifieans. Cibus. 
Libros depascit ; siccos praecipue. 



MELIBCEUS-HIPPONAX. 
THE 

38iglato Jhpers, 

EDITED, 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION, NOTES, 
GLOSSARY, AND COPIOUS INDEX, 



HOMER WILBUR, A. M., 

PASTOR OP THE FIRST CHURCH IN JAALAM, AND (PRO- 
SPECTIVE) MEMBER OF MANY LITERARY, LEARNED, 

AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES, 

(for which see page 173). 

The ploughman's whistle, or the trivial flute, 
Finds more respect than great Apollo's lute. 
Quarles's Emblems, b. ii. e. 8. 

Margaritas, munde porcine, calcasti : en, siliquas accipe. 
Jac. Car. Fil. ad Pub. Leg. § 1. 



NOTE TO TITLE-PAGE 

It will not have escaped the attentive eye, 
that I have, on the title-page, omitted those 
honorary appendages to the editorial name 
which not only add greatly to the value of 
every book, but whet and exacerbate the appe- 
tite of the reader. For not only does he sur- 
mise that an honorary membership of .literary 
and scientific societies implies a certain amount 
of necessary distinction on the part of the re- 
cipient of such decorations, but he is willing 
to trust himself more entirely to an author 
who writes under the fearful responsibility of 
involving the reputation of such bodies as the 
S. Archceol. Dahom. or the Acad. Lit. et Scient. 
Kamtschat. I cannot but think that the early 
editions of Sbakespeare and Milton would 
have met with more rapid and general accept- 
ance, but for the barrenness of their respec- 
tive title-pages ; and I believe that, even now, 
a publisher of the works of either of those 
justly distinguished men would find his ac- 
count in procuring their admission to the 
membership of learned bodies on the Conti- 
nent, — a proceeding no whit more incongru- 
ous than the reversal of the judgment against 
Socrates, when he was already more than 
twenty centuries beyond the reach of anti- 
dotes, and when his memory had acquired a 
deserved respectability. I conceive that it was 
a feeling of the importance of this precaution 
which induced Mr. Locke to style himself 
" Gent.' ' on the title-page of his Essay, as who 
should say to his readers that they could re- 
ceive his metaphysics on the honor of a gentle- 
man. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



i73 



Nevertheless, finding that, without descend- 
ing to a smaller size of type than would have 
been compatible with the dignity of the sev- 
eral societies to be named, I could not com- 
press my intended list within the limits of a 
single page, and thinking, moreover, that the 
act would carry with it an air of decorous 
modesty, I have chosen to take the reader 
aside, as it were, into my private closet, and 
there not only exhibit to him the diplomas 
which I already possess, but also to furnish 
him with a prophetic vision of those which I 
may, without undue presumption, hope for, as 
not beyond the reach of human ambition and 
attainment. And I am the rather induced to 
this from the fact that my name has been 
unaccountably dropped from the last trien- 
nial catalogue of our beloved Alma Mater. 
Whether this is to be attributed to the diffi- 
culty of Latinizing any of those honorary ad- 
juncts (with a complete list of which I took 
care to furnish the proper persons nearly a 
year beforehand), or whether it had its origin 
in any more culpable motives, I forbear to 
consider in this place, the matter being in 
course of painful investigation. But, however 
this may be, I felt the omission the more 
keenly, as I had, in expectation of the new 
catalogue, enriched the library of the Jaalam 
Athenaeum with the old one then in my posses- 
sion, by which means it has come about that 
my children will be deprived of a never- weary- 
ing winter evening's amusement in looking out 
the name of their parent in that distinguished 
roll. Those harmless innocents had at least 
committed no but I forbear, having in- 
trusted my reflections and animadversions on 
this painful topic to the safe-keeping of my 
private diary, intended for posthumous publi- 
cation. I state this fact here, in order that 
certain nameless individuals, who are, perhaps, 
overmuch congratulating themselves upon my 
silence, may know that a rod is in pickle which 
the vigorous hand of a justly incensed posterity 
will apply to their memories. 

The careful reader will note that, in the list 
which I have prepared, I have included the 
names of several Cisatlantic societies to which 
a place is not commonly assigned in proces- 
sions of this nature. I have ventured to do 
this, not only to encourage native ambition 
and genius, but also because I have never been 
able to perceive in what way distance (unless 
we suppose them at the end of a lever) could 
increase the weight of learned bodies. As far 
as I have been able to extend my researches 
among such stuffed specimens as occasionally 
reach America, I have discovered no generic 
difference between the antipodal Fogrum Ja- 
ponicum and the F. Americanum sufficiently 



common in our own immediate neighborhood. 
Yet, with a becoming deference to the popular 
belief that distinctions of this sort are en- 
hanced in value by every additional mile they 
travel, I have intermixed the names of some 
tolerably distant literary and other associa- 
tions with the rest. 

I add here, also, an advertisement, which, 
that it may be the more readily understood by 
those persons especially interested therein, I 
have written in that curtailed and otherwise 
maltreated canine Latin, to the writing and 
reading of which they are accustomed. 

Omnib. per tot. Orb. Terrar. Catalog. 
Academ. Edd. 

Minim, gent, diplom. ab inclytiss. acad. vest. 
orans, vir. honorand. operosiss., at sol. ut 
sciat. quant, glor. nom. meum (dipl. fort, 
concess.) catal. vest. temp, futur. affer., ill. 
subjec, addit. omnib. titul. honorar. qu. adh. 
non tant. opt. quam probab. put. 

*#* Litt. Uncial, distinx. ut Prces. S. Hist. 
Nat. Jaal. 

HOMEBUS WILBUR, Mr., Episc. 
Jaalam, S. T. D. 1850, et Yal. 1849, et Neo- 
Cses. et Brun. et Gulielm. 1852, et Gul. et Mar. 
et Bowd. et Georgiop. et Viridimont. et Columb. 
Nov. Ebor. 1853, et Amherst, et Watervill. 
et S. Jarlath. Hib. et S. Mar. et S. Joseph, 
et S. And. Scot. 1854, et Nashvill. et Dart, 
et Diekins. et Concord, et Wash, et Colum- 
bian, et Chariest, et Jeff, et Dubl. et Oxon. 
et Cantab, et Cast. 1855, P. U. N. C. H. et 
J. U. D. Gott. et Osnab. et Heidelb. 1860, 
et Acad. Bore us. Berolin. Soc, et SS. RR. 
Lugd. Bat. et Patav. et Lond. et Edinb. et 
Ins. Feejee. et Null. Terr, et Pekin. Soc. 
Hon. et S. H. S. et S. P. A. et A. A. S. et 
S. Humb. Univ. et S. Omn. Rer. Quarund. 
q. Aliar. Promov. Passamaquod. et H. P. C. 
et I. O. H, et A. A. *. et II. K. P. et *. 
B. K. et Peucin. et Erosoph. et Philadelph. 
et Frat. in Unit, et 2. T. et S. Archseolog. 
Athen. et Acad. Scient. et Lit. Panorm. et 
SS. R. H. Matrit. et Beeloochist. et Caffrar. 
et Caribb. et M. S. Reg. Paris, et S. Am. 
Antiserv. Soc. Hon. et P. D. Gott. et LL. D. 
1852, et D. C. L. et Mus. Doc Oxon. 1860, et 
M. M. S. S. et M. D. 1854, et Med. Fac. Univ. 
Harv. Soc. et S. pro Convers. Pollywog. Soc. 
Hon. et Higgl. Piggl. et LL. B. 1853, et S. 
pro Christianiz. Moschet. Soc. et SS. Ante- 
Diluv. ubiq. Gent. Soc. Hon. et Civit. Cleric. 
Jaalam. et S. pro Diffus. General. Tenebr. 
Secret. Corr. 



174 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



INTRODUCTION 

When, more than three years ago, my tal- 
ented young- parishioner, Mr. Biglow, came to 
me and submitted to my animadversions the 
first of his poems which he intended to com- 
mit to the more hazardous trial of a city news- 
paper, it never so much as entered my imagi- 
nation to conceive that his productions would 
ever be gathered into a fair volume, and ush- 
ered into the august presence of the reading 
public by myself. So little are we short- 
sighted mortals able to predict the event ! I 
confess that there is to me a quite new sat- 
isfaction in being associated (though only as 
sleeping partner) in a book which can stand 
by itself in an independent unity on the 
shelves of libraries. For there is always this 
drawback from the pleasure of printing a ser- 
mon, that, whereas the queasy stomach of this 
generation will not bear a discourse long 
enough to make a separate volume, those re- 
ligious and godly-minded children (those Sam- 
uels, if I may call them so) of the brain must 
at first lie buried in an undistinguished heap, 
and then get such resurrection as is vouch- 
safed to them, mummy-wrapped with a score 
of others in a cheap binding, with no other 
mark of distinction than the word "Miscella- 
neous " printed upon the back. Far be it from 
me to claim any credit for the quite unex- 
pected popularity which I am pleased to find 
these bucolic strains have attained unto. If I 
know myself, I am measurably free from the 
itch of vanity ; yet I may be allowed to say 
that I was not backward to recognize in them 
a certain wild, puckery, acidulous (sometimes 
-even verging toward that point which, in our 
rustic phrase, is termed shut-eyed) flavor, not 
wholly unpleasing, nor unwholesome, to pal- 
ates cloyed with the sugariness of tamed and 
cultivated fruit. It may be, also, that some 
touches of my own, here and there, may have 
led to their wider acceptance, albeit solely 
from my larger experience of literature and 
authorship. 1 

I was at first inclined to discourage Mr. 
Biglow's attempts, as knowing that the desire 
to poetize is one of the diseases naturally in- 
cident to adolescence, which, if the fitting 
remedies be not at once and with a bold hand 
applied, may become chronic, and render one, 
who might else have become in due time an 
ornament of the social circle, a painful object 
even to nearest friends and relatives. But 
thinking, on a further experience, that there 
was a germ of promise in him which required 

1 The reader curious in such matters may refer (if he 
can find them) to A sermon preached on the Anniver- 
sary of the Dark Day, An Artillery Election Sermon, 



only culture and the pulling up of weeds from 
about it, I thought it best to set before him 
the acknowledged examples of English com- 
position in verse, and leave the rest to natural 
emulation. With this view, I accordingly lent 
him some volumes of Pope and Goldsmith, to 
the assiduous study of which he promised to 
devote his evenings. Not long afterward, he 
brought me some verses written upon that 
model, a specimen of which I subjoin, having 
changed some phrases of less elegancy, and a 
few rhymes objectionable to the cultivated ear. 
The poem consisted of childish reminiscences, 
and the sketches which follow will not seem 
destitute of truth to those whose fortunate 
education began in a country village. And, 
first, let us hang up his charcoal portrait of 
the school-dame. 

" Propped on the marsh, a dwelling now, I see 
The humble school-house of my A, B, C, 
Where well-drilled urchins, each behind his 

tire, 
Waited in ranks the wished command to fire, 
Then all together, when the signal came, 
Discharged their a-b abs against the dame. 
Daughter of Danaus, who could daily pour 
In treacherous pipkins her Pierian store, 
She, mid the volleyed learning firm and calm, 
Patted the f urloughed ferule on her palm, 
And, to our wonder, could divine at once 
Who flashed the pan, and who was downright 

dunce. 

" There young Devotion learned to climb with 

ease 
The gnarly limbs of Scripture family-trees, 
And he was most commended and admired 
Who soonest to the topmost twig perspired ; 
Each name was called as many various ways 
As pleased the reader's ear on different days, 
So that the weather, or the ferule's stings, 
Colds in the head, or fifty other things, 
Transformed the helpless Hebrew thrice a 

week 
To guttural Pequot or resounding Greek, 
The vibrant accent skipping here and there, 
Just as it pleased invention or despair ; 
No controversial Hebraist was the Dame ; 
With or without the points pleased her the 

same ; 
If any tyro found a name too tough, 
And looked at her, pride furnished skill 

enough ; 
She nerved her larynx for the desperate thing, 
And cleared the five-barred syllables at a 

spring. 

" Ah, dear old times ! there once it was my hap, 
Perched on a stool, to wear the long-eared cap ; 
From books degraded, there I sat at ease, 
A drone, the envy of compulsory bees ; 
Rewards of merit, too, full many a time, 

A Discourse on the Late Eclipse, Dorcas, a Funeral 
Sermon on the Death of Madam Submit Tidd, Relict of 
the late Experience Tidd, Esq., &c, &c. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



J 75 



Each with its woodcut and its moral rhyme, 
And pierced half-dollars hung on ribbons gay 
About my neck (to be restored next day) 
I carried home, rewards as shining then 
As those that deck the lifelong pains of men, 
More solid than the redemanded praise 
With which the world beribbons later days. 



"Ah, dear old times! how brightly ye re- 
turn! 
How, rubbed afresh, your* phosphor traces 

burn ! 
The ramble schoolward through dewsparkling 

meads, 
The willow-wands turned Cinderella steeds, 
The impromptu pin-bent hook, the deep re- 
morse 
O'er the chance-captured minnow's inehlong 

corse ; 
The pockets, plethoric with marbles round, 
That still a space for ball and pegtop found, 
Nor satiate yet, could manage to confine 
Horsechestnuts, flagroot, and the kite's wound 

twine, 
Nay, like the prophet's carpet could take in, 
Enlarging still, the popgun's magazine ; 
The dinner carried in the small tin pail, 
Shared with some dog, whose most beseeching 

tail 
And dripping tongue and eager ears belied 
The assumed indifference of canine pride ; 
The caper homeward, shortened if the cart 
Of Neighbor Pomeroy, trundling from the 

mart, 
O'ertook me, — then, translated to the seat 
I praised the steed, how stanch he was and 

fleet, 
While the bluff farmer, with superior grin, 
Explained where horses should be thick, where 

thin, 
And warned me (joke he always had in store) 
To shun a beast that four white stockings wore. 
What a fine natural courtesy was his ! 
His nod was pleasure, and his full bow bliss ; 
How did his well-thumbed hat, with ardor 

rapt, 
Its curve decorous to each rank adapt ! 
How did it graduate with a courtly ease 
The whole long scale of social differences, 
Yet so gave each his measure running o'er, 
None thought his own was less, his neighbor's 

more ; 
The squire was flattered, and the pauper knew 
Old times acknowledged 'neath the threadbare 

blue! 
Dropped at the corner of the embowered lane, 
Whistling I wade the knee-deep leaves again, 
While eager Argus, who has missed all day 
The sharer of his condescending play, 
Comes leaping onward with a bark elate 
And boisterous tail to greet me at the gate ; 
That I was true in absence to our love 
Let the thick dog's-ears in my primer prove." 

I add only one further extract, which will 
pos J hoi nterest to all such as 



have endeavored to glean the materials of rev- 
olutionary history from the lips of aged per- 
sons, who took a part in the actual making of 
it, and, finding the manufacture profitable, 
continued the supply in an adequate propor- 
tion to the demand. 

" Old Joe is gone, who saw hot Percy goad 
His slow artillery up the Concord road, 
A tale which grew in wonder, year by year, 
As, every time he told it, Joe drew near 
To the main fight, till, faded and grown gray, 
The original scene to bolder tints gave way ; 
Then Joe had heard the foe's scared double- 
quick 
Beat on stove drum with one uncaptured stick, 
And, ere death came the lengthening tale to 

lop, 
Himself had fired, and seen a red-coat drop ; 
Had Joe lived long enough, that scrambling 

fight 
Had squared more nearly with his sense of 

right, 
And vanquished Percy, to complete the tale, 
Had hammered stone for life in Concord jail." 

I do not know that the foregoing extracts 
ought not to be called my own rather than Mr. 
Biglow's, as, indeed, he maintained stoutly 
that my file had left nothing of his in them. I 
should not, perhaps, have felt entitled to take 
so great liberties with them, had I not more 
than suspected an hereditary vein of poetry in 
myself, a very near ancestor having written a 
Latin poem in the Harvard Gratulatio on the 
accession of George the Third. Suffice it to 
say, that, whether not satisfied with such lim- 
ited approbation as I could conscientiously be- 
stow, or from a sense of natural inaptitude, 
certain it is that my young friend could, never 
be induced to any further essays in this kind. 
He affirmed that it was to him like writing 
in a foreign tongue, — that Mr. Pope's versifi- 
cation was like the regular ticking of one of 
Willard's clocks, in which one could fancy, 
after long listening, a certain kind of rhythm 
or tune, but which yet was only a poverty- 
stricken tick, tick, after all, — and that he had 
never seen a sweet-water on a trellis growing 
so fairly, or in forms so pleasing to his eye, as 
a fox-grape over a scrub-oak in a swamp. He 
added I know not what, to the effect that the 
sweet-water would only be the more disfigured 
by having its leaves starched and ironed out, 
and that Pegasus (so he called him) hardly 
looked right with his mane and tail in curl- 
papers. These and other such opinions I did 
not long strive to eradicate, attributing them 
rather to a defective education and senses un- 
tuned by too long familiarity with purely nat- 
ural objects, than to a perverted moral sense. 
I was the more inclined to this leniency since 



176 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



sufficient evidence was not to seek, that his 
verses, wanting- as they certainly were in classic 
polish and point, had somehow taken hold of 
the public ear in a surprising- manner. So, 
only setting him right as to the quantity of the 
proper name Pegasus, I left him to follow the 
bent of his natural genius. 

Yet could I not surrender him wholly to the 
tutelage of the pagan (which, literally inter- 
preted, signifies village) muse without yet a 
further effort for his conversion, and to this 
end I resolved that whatever of poetic fire yet 
burned in myself, aided by the assiduous bel- 
lows of correct models, should be put in requi- 
sition. Accordingly, when my ingenious young 
parishioner brought to my study a copy of 
verses which he had written touching the ac- 
quisition of territory resulting from the Mexi- 
can war, and the folly of leaving the question 
of slavery or freedom to the adjudication of 
chance, I did myself indite a short fable or 
apologue after the manner of Gay and Prior, 
to the end that he might see how easily even 
such subjects as he treated of were capable of 
a more refined sty^e and more elegant expres- 
sion. Mr. Biglow's production was as fol- 
lows : — 



THE TWO GUNNERS 



Two fellers, Isrel named and Joe, 
One Sundy mornin' 'greed to go 
Agunnin' soon 'z the bells wuz done 
And meetin' finally begun, 
So'st no one would n't be about 
Ther Sabbath-breakin' to spy out. 

Joe did n't want to go a mite ; 

He felt ez though 't warn't skeercely right, 

But, when his doubts he went to speak on, 

Isrel he up and called him Deacon, 

An' kep' apokin' fun like sin 

An' then arubbin' on it in, 

Till Joe, less skeered o' doin' wrong 

Than bein' laughed at, went along. 

Past noontime they went trampin' round 

An' nary thing to pop at found, 

Till, fairly tired o' their spree, 

They leaned their guns agin a tree, 

An' jest ez they wuz settin' down 

To take their noonin', Joe looked roun' 

And see (acrost lots in a pond 

That warn't mor'n twenty rod beyond) 

A goose that on the water sot 

Ez ef awaitin' to be shot. 

Isrel he ups and grabs his gun ; 
Sez he, " By ginger, here 's some fun ! " 
'' Don't fire," sez Joe, " it ain't no use, 
Thet 's Deacon Peleg's tame wil'-goose : " 
Sez Isrel, " I don't care a cent. 



I 've sighted an' I '11 let her went ; " 

Bang ! went queen's-arm, ole gander flopped 

His wings a spell, an' quorked, an' dropped. 

Sez Joe, " I would n't ha' been hired 
At that poor critter to ha' fired, 
But sence it 's clean gin up the ghost, 
We '11 hev the tallest kind o' roast ; 
I guess our waistbands '11 be tight 
'Fore it comes ten o'clock ternight." 

" I won't agree to no such bender," 
Sez Isrel ; " keep it tell it 's tender ; 
'T aint wuth a snap afore it 's ripe." 
Sez Joe, " I 'd jest ez lives eat tripe ; 
You air a buster ter suppose 
I 'd eat what makes me hoi' my nose ! " 

So they disputed to an' fro 

Till cunnin' Isrel sez to Joe, 
" Don't le's stay here an' play the fool, 

Le's wait till both on us git cool, 

Jest for a day or two le's hide it, 

An' then toss up an' so decide it." 
" Agreed ! " sez Joe, an' so they did, 

An' the ole goose wuz safely hid. 

Now 't wuz the hottest kind o' weather, 
An' when at last they come together, 
It did n't signify which won, 
Fer all the mischief hed been done : 
The goose wuz there, but, fer his soul, 
Joe would n't ha' tetched it with a pole ; 
But Isrel kind o' liked the smell on 't 
An' made his dinner very well on 't. 

My own humble attempt was in manner s 
form following, and I print it here, I sincerely 
trust, out of no vainglory, but solely with the 
hope of doing good. 



LEAVING THE MATTER OPEN 

A TALE 
BY HOMER WILBUR, A. M. 

Two brothers once, an ill-matched pair, 

Together dwelt (no matter where), 

To whom an Uncle Sam, or some one, 

Had left a house and farm in common. 

The two in principles and habits 

Were different as rats from rabbits ; 

Stout Farmer North, with frugal care, 

Laid up provision for his heir, 

Not scorning with hard sun-browned hands 

To scrape acquaintance with his lands ; 

Whatever thing he had to do 

He did, and made it pay him, too ; 

He sold his waste stone by the pound, 

His drains made water-wheels spin round, 

His ice in summer-time he sold, 

His wood brought ] fit ben i *d, 

He dug and delved orn till night. 

Strove to make pro+ • square with right, 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



177 



Lived on his means, cut no great dash, 
And paid his debts in honest cash. , 

On tother hand, his brother South 

Lived very much from hand to mouth, 

Played gentleman, nursed dainty hands, 

Borrowed North's money on his' lands, 

And culled his morals and his graces 

From cock-pits, bar-rooms, fights, and races ; 

His sole work in the farming line 

Was keeping droves of long-legged swine, 

Which brought great bothers and expenses 

To North in looking after fences, , 

And, when they happened to break through, 

Cost him both time and temper too, 

For South insisted it was plain 

He ought to drive them home again, 

And North consented to the work . , 

Because he loved to buy cheap pork. 

Meanwhile, South' s swine increasing' fast, 
His farm became too small at last ; 
So, having thought the matter over, 
And feeling bound to live in clover 
And never pay the clover's worth, 
He said one day to Brother North : — 

" Our families are both increasing, 
And, though we labor without ceasing, 
Our produce soon will be too scant 
To keep our children out of want ; 
They who wish fortune to be lasting 
Must be both prudent and forecasting ; 
We soon shall need more land ; a lot 
I know, that cheaply can be bo't ; 
You lend the cash, I '11 buy the acres, 
And we '11 be equally partakers." 

Poor North, whose Anglo-Saxon blood 
Gave him a hankering after mud, 
Wavered a moment, then consented, 
And, when the cash was paid, repented ; 
To make the new land worth a pin, 
Thought he, it must be all fenced in, 
For, if South's swine once get the run on 't 
No kind of farming can be done on 't ; 
If that don't suit the other side, 
'T is best we instantly divide. 

But somehow South coidd ne'er incline 
This way or that to run the line, 
And always found some new pretence 
'Gainst setting the division fence ; 
At last he said : — 

" For peace's sake, 
Liberal concessions I will make ; 
Though I believe, upon my soul, 
I 've a just title to the whole, 
I '11 make an offer which I call 
Gen'rous, — we '11 have no fence at all ; 
Then both of us, whene'er we choose, 
Can take what part we want to use ; 
If you should chance to need it first, 
Pick you the best, I '11 take the worst." 

" Agreed ! " cried North ; thought he, This fall 
With wheat and rye I '11 sow it all ; 



In that way I shall get the start, 
And South may whistle for his part. 
So thought, so done, the field was sown, 
And, winter having come and gone, 
Sly North walked blithely forth to spy, 
The progress of his wheat and rye ; 
Heavens, what a sight ! his brother's swine 
Had asked themselves all out to dine ; 
Such grunting, munching, rooting, shoving, 
The soil seemed all alive and moving, / 

As for his grain, such work they 'd made on 'tf 
He could n't spy a single blade on 't. 

Off in a rage he rushed to South, 
1 My wheat and rye ' ' — grief choked his 

mouth : 
1 Pray don't mind me," said South, " but plant 

All of the new land that you want ; " 
' Yes, but your hogs," cried North ; 

" The grain 
Won't hurt them," answered South again ; 
' But they destroy my crop ; " 

"No doubt ; 
'T is fortunate you 've found it out ; 
Misfortunes teach, and only they, 
You must not sow it in their way ; " 

'Nay, you," says North, "must keep them 
out;" 

' Did I create them with a snout ? " 
Asked South demurely ; " as agreed, 
The land is open to your seed, 
And would you fain prevent my pigs 
From running there their harmless rigs ? 
God knows I view this compromise 
With not the most approving eyes ; 
I gave up my unquestioned rights 
For sake of quiet days and nights ; 
I offered then, you know 't is true, 
To cut the piece of land in two." 

' Then cut it now," growls North ; 

"Abate 
Your heat," says South, " 't is now too late ; 
I offered you the rocky corner, 
But you, of your own good the scorner, 
Refused to take it ; I am sorry ; 
No doubt you might have found a quarry, 
Perhaps a gold-mine, for aught I know, 
Containing heaps of native rhino ; 
You can't expect me to resign 
My rights" — 

" But where," quoth North, " are mine ? " 
''Your rights," says tother, "well, that's 
funny, 
I bought the land " — 

" I paid the money ; " 
'' That," answered South, " is from the point, 
The ownership, you '11 grant, is joint ; 
I 'm sure my only hope and trust is 
Not law so much as abstract justice, 
Though, you remember, 't was agreed 
That so and so — consult the deed ; 
Objections now are out of date, 



178 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



They might have answered once, but Fate 

Quashes them at the point we 've got to ; 

Obsta principiis, that 's my motto." 

So saying, South began to whistle 

And. looked as obstinate as gristle, 

While North went homeward, each brown paw 

Clenched like a knot of natural law, 

And all the while, in either ear, 

Heard something clicking wondrous clear. 

To turn now to other matters, there are two 
things upon which it should seem fitting to 
.dilate somewhat more largely in this place, — 
the Yankee character and the Yankee dialect. 
And, first, of the Yankee character, which has 
wanted neither open maligners, nor eve 1 more 
dangerous enemies in the persons of those un- 
skilful painters who have given to it that hard- 
ness, angularity, and want of proper perspec- 
tive, which, in truth, belonged, not to their 
subject, but to their own niggard and unskilful 
pencil. 

New England was not so much the colony of 
a mother country, as a Hagar driven forth into 
the wilderness. The little self - exiled band 
which came hither in 1620 came, not to seek 
gold, but to found a democracy. They came 
that they might have the privilege to work and 
pray, to sit upon hard benches and listen to 
painful preachers as long as they woul yea, 
even unto thirty-seventhly, if the spirit so willed 
it. And surely, if the Greek might boast his 
Thermopylae, where three hundred men fell in 
resisting the Persian, we may well be proud of 
our Plymouth Rock, where a handful of men, 
women, and children not merely faced, but 
vanquished, winter, famine, the wilderness, and 
the yet more invincible storge that drew them 
back to the green island far away. These found 
no lotus growing upon the surly shore, the 
taste of which could make them forget their 
little native Ithaca ; nor were they so wanting to 
themselves in faith as to burn their ship, but 
could see the fair west-wind belly the homeward 
sail, and then turn unrepining to grapple with 
the terrible Unknown. 

As Want was the prime foe these hardy ex- 
odists had to fortress themselves against, so it 
is little wonder if that traditional feud be long 
in wearing out of the stock. The wounds of 
the old warfare were long a-healing, and an east- 
wind of hard times puts a new ache into every 
one of them. Thrift was the first lesson in their 
horn-book, pointed out, letter after letter, by 
the lean finger of the hard schoolmistress, Ne- 
cessity. Neither were those plump, rosy-gilled 
Englishmen that came hither, but a hard-faced, 
atrabilious, earnest-eyed race, stiff from long 
wrestling with the Lord in prayer, and who 
had taught Satan to dread the new Puritan hug. 
Add two hundred years' influence of soil, cli- 
mate, and exposure, with its necessary result 



of idiosyncrasies, and we have the present 
Yankee, full of expedients, half -master of all 
trades, inventive in all but the beautiful, full 
of shifts, not yet capable of comfort, armed at 
all points against the old enemy Hunger, long- 
animous, good at patching, not so careful for 
what is best as for what will do, with a clasp 
to his purse and a button to his pocket, not 
skilled to build against Time, as in old countries, 
but against sore-pressing Need, accustomed to 
move the world with no irov gto> but his own 
two feet, and no lever but his own long forecast. 
A strange hybrid, indeed, did circumstance 
beget, here in the New World, upon the old 
Puritan stock, and the earth never before saw 
such mystic-practiealism, such niggard-gen- 
iality, such calculating-fanaticism, such cast- 
iron-enthusiasm, such sour-faced-humor, such 
close - fisted - generosity. This new Grceculus 
esuriens will make a living out of anything. 
He will invent new trades as well as tools. 
His brain is his capital, and he will get educa- 
tion at all risks. Put him on Juan Fernandez, 
and he would make a spelling-book first, and a 
salt-pan afterward. In ccelum, jusseris, ibit, — 
or the other way either, — it is all one, so any- 
thing is to be got by it. Yet, after all, thin, 
speculative Jonathan is more like the English- 
man of two centuries ago than John Bull him- 
self is. He has lost somewhat in solidity, has 
become fluent and adaptable, but more of the 
original groundwork of character remains. He 
feels more at home with Fulke Greville, Her- 
bert of Cherbury, Quarles, George Herbert,, 
and Browne, than with his modern English 
cousins. He is nearer than John, by at least 
a hundred years, to Naseby, Marston Moor, 
Worcester, and the time when, if ever, there 
were true Englishmen. John Bull has suffered 
the idea of the Invisible to be very much fat- 
tened out of him. Jonathan is conscious still 
that he lives in the world of the Unseen as well 
as of the Seen. To move John you must make 
your fulcrum of solid beef and pudding ; an 
abstract idea will do for Jonathan. 



*** TO THE INDULGENT READER 

My friend, the Rev. Mr. Wilbur, having been 
seized with a dangerous fit of illness, before this 
Introduction had passed through the press, and 
being incapacitated for all literary exertion, sent 
to me his notes, memoranda, &c, and requested 
me to fashion them into some shape more fitting 
for the general eye. This, owing to the frag- 
mentary and disjointed state of his manuscripts, 
I have felt wholly unable to do ; yet being un- 
willing that the reader should be deprived of such 
parts of his lucubrations as seemed more finished,. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



179 



and not well discerning how to segregate these 
from the rest, I have concluded to send them 
all to the press precisely as they are. 

Columbus Nye, 
Pastor of a Church in Bungtown Corner. 

It remains to speak of the Yankee dialect. 
And, first, it may he premised, in a general 
way, that any one much read in the writings of 
the early colonists need not be told that the 
far greater share of the words and phrases now 
esteemed peculiar to New England, and local 
there, were brought from the mother country. 
A person familiar with the dialect of certain 
portions of Massachusetts will not fail to re- 
cognize, in ordinary discourse, many words now 
noted in English vocabularies as archaic, the 
greater part of which were in common use about 
the time of the King James translation of the 
Bible. Shakespeare stands less in need of a 
glossary to most New-Englanders than to many 
a native of the Old Country. The peculiarities 
of our speech, however, are rapidly wearing out. 
As there is no country where reading is so uni- 
versal and newspapers are so multitudinous, so 
no phrase remains long local, but is transplanted 
in the mail-bags to every remotest corner of 
the land. Consequently our dialect approaches 
nearer to uniformity than that of any other 
nation. 

The English have complained of us for coin- 
ing new words. Many of those so stigmatized 
were old ones by them forgotten, and all make 
now an unquestioned part of the currency, 
wherever English is spoken. Undoubtedly, we 
have a right to make new words, as they are 
needed by the fresh aspects under which life 
presents itself here in the New World ; and, 
indeed, wherever a language is alive, it grows. 
It might be questioned whether we could not 
establish a stronger title to the ownership of 
the English tongue than the mother-islanders 
themselves. Here, past all question, is to be 
its great home and centre. And not only is it 
already spoken here by greater numbers, but 
with a far higher popular average of correct- 
ness than in Britain. The great writers of it, 
too, we might claim as ours, were ownership 
to be settled by the number of readers and 
lovers. 

As regards the provincialisms to be met 
with in this volume, I may say that the reader 
will not find one which is not (as I believe) 
either native or imported with the early set- 
tlers, nor one which I have not, with my own 
ears, heard in familiar use. In the metrical 
portion of the book, I have endeavored to 
adapt the spelling as nearly as possible to the 
ordinary mode of pronunciation. Let the read- 
er who deems me over-particular remember 
this caution of Martial : — 



" Quern recitas, mens est, Fidentine, libellus; 
Sed male cum recitas, incipit essetuus.'''' 

A few further explanatory remarks will not 
be impertinent. 

I shall barely lay down a few general rules 
for the reader's guidance. 

1. The genuine Yankee never gives the 
rough sound to the r when he can help it, and 
often displays considerable ingenuity in avoid- 
ing it even before a vowel. 

2. He seldom sounds the final g, a piece of 
self-denial, if we consider his partiality for 
nasals. The same of the final d, as han' and 
stan'' for hand and stand. 

3. he A in such words as while, when, where, 
he omits altogether. 

4. In regard to a, he shows some inconsis- 
tency, sometimes giving a close and obscure 
sound, as hev for have, hendy for handy, ez for 
as, thet for that, and again giving it the broad 
sound it has in father, as hansome for hand- 
some. 

5. To the sound ou he prefixes an e (hard to 
exemplify otherwise than orally). 

The following passage in Shakespeare he 
would recite thus : — 

" Neow is the winta uv eour discontent 

Med ^orious summa by this sun o' Yock, 

An' all the cleouds thet leowered upun eour 

heouse 
In the deep buzzum o' the oshin buried ; 
Neow air eour breows beound 'ith victorious 

wreaths ; 
Eour breused arms hung up f er monimunce ; 
Eour starn alarums changed to merry meetins, 
Eour dreffle marches to delighfle masures. 
Grim-visaged war heth smeuthed his wrinkled 

front, 
An' neow, instid o' mountin' barebid steeds 
To fright the souk o' f erfle edverseries, 
He capers nimly in a lady's chamber, 
To the lascivious pleasin' uv a loot." 

6. Au, in such words as daughter and slaugh- 
ter, he pronounces ah. 

7. To the dish thus seasoned add a drawl ad 
libitum. 

[Mr. "Wilbur's notes here become entirely fragmen- 
tary.— C. N.] 

a. Unable to procure a likeness of Mr. Big- 
low, I thought the curious reader might be 
gratified with a sight of the editorial efiigies. 
And here a choice between two was offered, — 
the one a profile (entirely black) cut by Doyle, 
the other a portrait painted by a native artist 
of much promise. The first of these seemed 
wanting in expression, and in the second a 
slight obliquity of the visual organs has been 
heightened (perhaps from an over-desire of 
force on the part of the artist) into too close 



i8o 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



an approach to actual strabismus. This slight 
divergence in my optical apparatus from the 
ordinary model — however I may have been 
taught to regard it in the light of a mercy 
rather than a cross, since it enabled me to give 
as much of directness and personal application 
to my discourses as met the wants of my con- 
gregation, without risk of offending any by 
being supposed to have him or her in my eye 
(as the saying is) — seemed yet to Mrs. Wil- 
bur a sufficient objection to the engraving of 
the aforesaid painting. We read of many who 
either absolutely refused to allow the copying 
of their features, as especially did Plotinus and 
Agesilaus among the ancients, not to mention 
the more modern instances of Seioppius, Palse- 
ottus, Pinellus, Velserus, Gataker, and others, 
or were indifferent thereto, as Cromwell. 

j8. Yet was Caesar desirous of concealing his 
baldness. Per contra, my Lord Protector's 
carefulness in the matter of his wart might be 
cited. Men generally more desirous of being 
improved in their portraits than characters. 
Shall probably find very unflattered likenesses 
of ourselves in Recording Angel's gallery. 

7. Whether any of our national peculiarities 
may be traced to our use of stoves, as a certain 
closeness of the lips in pronunciation, and a 
smothered smoulderingness of disposition sel- 
dom roused to open flame ? An unrestrained 
intercourse with fire probably conducive to 
generosity and hospitality of soul. Ancient 
Mexicans used stoves, as the friar Augustin 
Ruiz reports, Hakluyt, III. 468, — but Popish 
priests not always reliable authority. 

To-day picked my Isabella grapes. Crop 

injured by attacks of rose-bug in the spring. 

Whether Noah was justifiable in preserving 
this class of insects ? 

8. Concerning Mr. Biglow's pedigree. Tol- 
erably certain that there was never a poet 
among his ancestors. An ordination hymn 
attributed to a maternal uncle, but perhaps a 
sort of production not demanding the creative 
faculty. 

His grandfather a painter of the grandiose 
or Michael Angelo school. Seldom painted ob- 
jects smaller than houses or barns, and these 
with uncommon expression. 

e. Of the Wilburs no complete pedigree. 
The crest said to be a wild boar, whence, per- 
haps, the name. (?) A connection with the 
Earls of Wilbraham (quasi wild boar ham) 
might be made out. This suggestion worth 
following up. In 1677, John W. m. Expect 

, had issue, 1. John, 2. Haggai, 3. Expect, 

4. Ruhamah, 5. Desire. 



" Hear lyes y e bodye of Mrs Expect Wilber, 
Y e crewell salvages they kil'd her 
Together w' h other Christian soles eleaven, 
October y e ix daye, 1707. 
Y e stream of Jordan sh' as crost ore 
And now expeacts me on y e other shore : 
I five in hope her soon to join ; 
Her earthlye yeeres were forty and nine." 
From Gravestone in Pekussett, North Parish. 

This is unquestionably the same John who 
afterward (1711) married Tabitha Hagg or 



But if this were the case, she seems to have 
died early ; for only three years after, namely, 
1714, we have evidence that he married Wini- 
fred, daughter of Lieutenant Tipping. 

He seems to have been a man of substance, 
for we find him in 1696 conveying " one un- 
divided eightieth part of a salt-meadow" in 
Yabbok, and he commanded a sloop in 1702. 

Those who doubt the importance of genea- 
logical studiesywste potius quam argumento eru- 
diendi. 

I trace him as far as 1723, and there lose 
him. In that year he was chosen selectman. 

No gravestone. Perhaps overthrown when 
new hearse-house was built, 1802. 

He was probably the son of John, who came 
from Bilham Comit. Salop, circa 1642. 

This first John was a man of considerable 
importance, being twice mentioned with the 
honorable prefix of Mr. in the town records. 
Name spelt with two l-s. 

" Hear lyeth y e bod [stone unhappily broken.'] 
Mr. Ihon Willber [Esq.] [I inclose this in 

brackets as doubtful. To me it seems 

clear.] 
Ob't die [illegible; looks like xviii.] .... Hi 

[prob. 1693.] 

paynt 

deseased seinte : 

A friend and [fath]er untoe all y e opreast, 
Hee gave y e wicked familists noe reast, 
When Sat [an bl]ewe his Antinomian blaste, 
Wee clong to [Willber as a steadf]ast maste. 
[A] gaynst y e horrid Qua[kers] " 

It is greatly to be lamented that this curious 
epitaph is mutilated. It is said that the sacri- 
legious British soldiers made a target of the 
stone during the war of Independence. How 
odious an animosity which pauses not at the 
grave ! How brutal that which spares not 
the monuments of authentic history ! This is 
not improbably from the pen of Rev. Moody 
Pyram, who is mentioned by Hubbard as hav- 
ing been noted for a silver vein of poetry. If 
his papers be still extant, a copy might possi- 
bly be recovered. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 

No. I 
A LETTER 

FROM MR. EZEKIEL BIGLOW OF JAALAM 
TO THE HON. JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM, 
EDITOR OF THE BOSTON COURIER, IN- 
CLOSING A POEM OF HIS SON, MR. 
HOSEA BIGLOW 

Jatlem, june 1846. 

Mister Eddyter : — Our Hosea wuz 
down to Boston last week, and he see a 
cruetin Sarjunt a struttin round as popler 
as a hen with 1 chicking, with 2 fellers a 
drummin and fifin arter him like all nater. 
the sarjunt he thout Hosea hed n't gut his 
i teeth cut cos he looked a kindo 's though 
he 'd jest com down, so he cal'lated to hook 
him in, but Hosy wood n't take none o' his 
sarse for all he hed much as 20 Rooster's 
tales stuck onto his hat and eenamost enuf 
brass a bobbin up and down on his shoul- 
ders and figureed onto his coat and trousis, 
let alone wut nater hed sot in his featers, 
to make a 6 pounder out on. 

wal, Hosea he com home considerabal 
riled, and arter I'd gone to bed I heern 
Him a thrashin round like a short-tailed 
Bull in fli-time. The old Woman ses she 
to me ses she, Zekle, ses she, our Hosee 's 
gut the chollery or suthin anuther ses she, 
don't you Bee skeered, ses I, he 's oney 
amakin pottery 1 ses i, he 's oilers on hand 
at that ere busynes like Da & martin, and 
shureenuf, cum mornin, Hosy he cum down 
stares full chizzle, hare on eend and cote 
tales flyin, and sot rite of to go reed his 
varses to Parson Wilbur bein he haint aney 
grate shows o' book larnin himself, bimeby 
he cum back and sed the parson wuz dreffle 
tickled with 'em as i hoop you will Be, and 
said they wuz True grit. 

Hosea ses taint hardly fair to call 'em 
hisn now, cos the parson kind o' slicked off 
sum o' the last varses, but he told Hosee 
he did n't want to put his ore in to tetch to 
the Rest on 'em, bein they wuz verry well 
As thay wuz, and then Hosy ses he sed 
suthin a nuther about Simplex Mundishes 
or sum sech feller, but I guess Hosea kind 
o' didn't hear him, for I never hearn o' 
nobody o' that name in this villadge, and 

1 Aut insanit, aut versos facit. — H. W. 



I 've lived here man and boy 76 year cum 
next tater diggin, and thair aint no wheres 
a kitting spryer 'n I be. 

If you print 'em I wish you 'd jest let 
folks know who hosy's father is, cos my ant 
Keziah used to say it 's nater to be curus 
ses she, she aint livin though and he 's 
a likely kind o' lad. 

EZEKIEL BIGLOW. 



Thrash away, you '11 hev to rattle 

On them kittle-drums o' yourn, — 
'Taint a knowin' kind o' cattle 

Thet is ketched with mouldy corn ; 
Put in stiff, you fifer feller, 

Let folks see how spry you be, — 
Guess you '11 toot till you are yeller 

'Fore you git ahold o' me ! 

Thet air flag 's a leetle rotten, 

Hope it aint your Sunday's best; — 
Fact ! it takes a sight o' cotton 

To stuff out a soger's chest: 
Sence we farmers hev to pay fer 't, 

Ef you must wear humps like these, 
S'posin' you should try salt hay fer 't, 

It would du ez slick ez grease. 

'T would n't suit them Southun fellers, 

They 're a dreffle graspin' set, 
We must oilers blow the bellers 

Wen they want their irons het; 
May be it 's all right ez preachin', 

But my narves it kind o' grates, 
Wen I see the overreachin' 

O' them nigger-drivin' States. 

Them thet rule us, them slave-traders, 

Haint they cut a thunderin' swarth 
(Helped by Yankee renegaders), 

Thru the vartu o' the North ! 
We begin to think it 's nater 

To take sarse an' not be riled; — 
Who 'd expect to see a tater 

All on eend at bein' biled ? 

Ez fer war, I call it murder, — 

There you hev it plain an' flat; 
I don't want to go no f urder 

Than my Testyment fer that; 
God hez sed so plump an' fairly, 

It 's ez long ez it is broad, 
An' you 've gut to git up airly 

Ef you want to take in God. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



'Taint your eppyletts an' feathers 

Make the thing a grain more right; 
'Taint afollerin' your bell-wethers 

Will excuse ye in His sight; 
Ef you take a sword an' dror it, 

An' go stick a feller thru, 
Guv'ment aint to answer for it, 

God '11 send the bill to you. 

Wut 's the use o' rneetin'-gom' 

Every Sabbath, wet or dry, 
Ef it 's right to go amowin' 

Feller-men like oats an' rye ? 
I dunno but wut it 's pooty 

Trainin' round in bobtail coats, — 
But it 's curus Christian dooty 

This 'ere cuttin' folks's throats. 

They may talk o' Freedom's airy 

Tell they 're pupple in the face, — 
It 's a grand gret cemetary 

Fer the barthrights of our race; 
They jest want this Californy 

So 's to lug new slave-states in 
To abuse ye, an' to scorn ye, 

An' to plunder ye like sin. 

Aint it cute to see a Yankee 

Take sech everlastin' pains, 
All to get the Devil's thankee 

Helpin' on 'em weld their chains ? 
Wy, it 's jest ez clear ez figgers, 

Clear ez one an' one make two, 
Chaps thet make black slaves o' niggers 

Want to make wite slaves o' you. 

Tell ye jest the eend I 've come to 

Arter cipherin' plaguy smart, 
An' it makes a handy sum, tu, 

Any gump could larn by heart; 
Laborin' man an' laborin' woman 

Hev one glory an' one shame. 
Ev'y thin' thet 's done inhuman 

Injers all on 'em the same. 

'Taint by turnin' out to hack folks 

You 're agoin' to git your right, 
Nor by lookin' down on black folks 

Coz you 're put upon by wite; 
Slavery aint o' nary color, 

'Taint the hide thet makes it wus, 
All it keers fer in a feller 

'S jest to make him fill its pus. 



Want to tackle me in, du ye ? 

I expect you '11 hev to wait ; 
Wen cold lead puts daylight thru ye 

You '11 begin to kal'late; 
S'pose the crows wun't fall to pickin* % 

All the carkiss from your bones, I 
Coz you helped to give a lickin' 

To them poor half-Spanish drones ? 

Jest go home an' ask our Nancy 

Wether I 'd be sech a goose 
Ez to jine ye, — guess you 'd fancy 

The etarnal bung wuz loose ! 
She wants me fer home consumption, 

Let alone the hay 's to mow, — 
Ef you 're arter folks o' gumption, 

You 've a darned long row to hoe. 

Take them editors thet 's crowin' 

Like a cockerel three months old, - — 
Don't ketch any on 'em goin', 

Though they be so blasted bold; 
Aint they a prime lot o' fellers ? 

'Fore they think on 't guess they '11 
sprout 
(Like a peach thet 's got the yellers), 

With the meanness bustin' out. 

Wal, go 'long to help 'em stealin' 

Bigger pens to cram with slaves, 
Help the men thet 's oilers dealin' 

Insults on your fathers' graves; 
Help the strong to grind the feeble, 

Help the many agin the few, 
Help the men thet call your people 

Wite washed slaves an' peddlin' crew ! 

Massachusetts, God forgive her, 

She 's akneelin' with the rest, 
She, thet ough' to ha' clung ferever 

In her grand old eagle-nest; 
She thet ough' to stand so fearless 

Wile the wracks are round her hurled, 
Holdin' up a beacon peerless 

To the oppressed of all the world ! 

Ha'n't they sold your colored seamen ? 

Ha'n't they made your env'ys w'iz ? 
Wut '11 make ye act like freemen ? 

Wut '11 git your dander riz ? 

Come, I '11 tell ye wut I 'm thinkin' 

Is our dooty in this fix, 
They 'd ha' done 't ez quick ez winkin' 

In the days o' seventy-six. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



183 



Clang the bells in every steeple, 

Call all true men to disown 
The tradoocers of our people, 

The enslavers o' their own; 
Let our dear old Bay State proudly 

Put the trumpet to her mouth, 
Let her ring this messidge loudly 

In the ears of all the South: — 

" I '11 return ye good f er evil 

Much ez we frail mortils can, 
But I wun't go help the Devil 

Makin' man the eus o' man; 
Call me coward, call me traiter, 

Jest ez suits your mean idees, — 
Here I stand a tyrant-hater, 

An' the friend o' God an' Peace! " 

Ef I 'd my way I hed ruther 

We should go to work an' part, 
They take one way, we take t' other, 

Guess it would n't break my heart; 
Man hed ough' to put asunder 

Them thet God has noways jined; 
An' I should n't gretly wonder 

Ef there 's thousands o' my mind. 

[The first recruiting- sergeant on record I 
conceive to have been that individual who is 
mentioned in the Book of Job as going to and 
fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it. 
Bishop Latimer will have him to have been a 
bishop, but to me that other calling would ap- 
pear more congenial. The sect of Cainites is 
not yet extinct, who esteemed the first-born of 
Adam to be the most worthy, not only because 
of that privilege of primogeniture, but inasmuch 
as he was able to overcome and slay his younger 
brother. That was a wise saying of the famous 
Marquis Peseara to the Papal Legate, that it 
was impossible for men to serve Mars and Christ 
at the same time. Yet in time past the profession 
of arms was judged to be tear' i^oxfiv that of a 
gentleman, nor does this opinion want for stren- 
uous upholders even in our day. Must we sup- 
pose, then, that the profession of Christianity 
was only intended for losels, or, at best, to 
afford an opening for plebeian ambition ? Or 
shall we hold with that nicely metaphysical 
Pomeranian, Captain Vratz, who was Count 
Konigsmark's chief instrument in the murder 
of Mr. Thynne, that the Scheme of Salvation 
has been arranged with an especial eye to the 
necessities of the upper classes, and that " God 
would consider a gentleman and deal with him 
suitably to the condition and profession he had 
placed him in " ? It may be said of us all, 
Exemploplus quam ratione vivimus. — H. W.] 



No. II 
A LETTER 

FROM MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE HON. J. 
T. BUCKINGHAM, EDITOR OF THE BOS- 
TON COURIER, COVERING A LETTER 
FROM MR. B. SAWIN, PRIVATE IN THE 
MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT 

[This letter of Mr. Sawin's was not origi- 
nally written in verse. Mr. Biglow, thinking it 
peculiarly susceptible of metrical adornment, 
translated it, so to speak, into his own vernacu- 
lar tongue. This is not the time to consider 
the question, whether rhyme be a mode of ex- 
pression natural to the human race. If leisure 
from other and more important avocations be 
granted, I will handle the matter more at large 
in an appendix to the present volume. In this 
place I will barely remark, that I have some- 
times noticed in the unlanguaged prattlings of 
infants a fondness for alliteration, assonance, 
and even rhyme, in which natural predisposition 
we may trace the three degrees through which 
our Anglo-Saxon verse rose to its culmination 
in the poetry of Pope. I would not be under- 
stood as questioning in these remarks that pious 
theory which supposes that children, if left 
entirely to themselves, would naturally dis- 
course in Hebrew. For this the authority of 
one experiment is claimed, and I could, with 
Sir Thomas Browne, desire its establishment, 
inasmuch as the acquirement of that sacred 
tongue would thereby be facilitated. lam aware 
that Herodotus states the conclusion of Psam- 
meticus to have been in favor of a dialect of 
the Phrygian. But, beside the chance that a 
trial of this importance would hardly be blessed 
to a Pagan monarch whose only motive was 
curiosity, we have on the Hebrew side the 
comparatively recent investigation of James 
the Fourth of Scotland. I will add to this pre- 
fatory remark, that Mr. Sawin, though a native 
of Jaalam. has never been a stated attendant 
on the religious exercises of my congregation. 
I consider my humble efforts prospered in that 
not one of my sheep hath ever indued the wolf's 
clothing of war, save for the comparatively 
innocent diversion of a militia training. Not 
that my flock are backward to undergo the 
hardships of defensive warfare. They serve 
cheerfully in the great army which fights, even 
unto death pro aris et focis, accoutred with the 
spade, the axe, the plane, the sledge, the spell- 
ing-book, and other such effectual weapons 
against want and ignorance and unthrift. I 
have taught them (under God) to esteem our 
human institutions as but tents of a night, to 
be stricken whenever Truth puts the bugle to 



184 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



her lips and sounds a march to the heights of 
wider-viewed intelligence and more perfect 
organization. — H. W.] 

Mister Bucktnum, the follerin Billet 
was writ hum by a Yung feller of our town 
that wuz cussed fool enuff to goe atrottin 
inter Miss Chiff arter a Drum and fife, it 
ain't Nater for a feller to let on that he 's 
sick o' any bizness that He went intu off 
his own free will and a Cord, but I rather 
caFlate he 's middlin tired o' voluntearin 
By this Time. I bleeve u may put depend- 
unts on his statemence. For I never heered 
nothin bad on him let Alone his havin what 
Parson Wilbur cals a pong shong for cock- 
tales, and he ses it wuz a soshiashun of idees 
sot him agoin arter the Crootin Sargient 
cos he wore a cocktale onto his hat. 

his Folks gin the letter to me and i shew 
it to parson Wilbur and he ses it oughter 
Bee printed, send It to mister Buckinum, 
ses he, i don't oilers agree with him, ses he, 
but by Time, 1 ses he, I du like a feller that 
aint a Feared. 

I have intusspussed a Few refleckshuns 
hear and thair. We 're kind o' prest with 
Hayin. 

Ewers respecfly 

HOSEA BIGLOW. 

This kind o' sogerin' aint a mite like our 

October trainin', 
A chap could clear right out from there ef 

't only looked like rainin', 
An' th' Cunnles, tu, could kiver up their 

shappoes with bandanners, 
An' send the insines skootin' to the bar- 
room with their banners 
(Fear o' gittin' on 'em spotted), an' a feller 

could cry quarter 
Ef he fired away his ramrod arter tu much 

rum an' water. 
Recollect wut fun we hed, you 'n' I an' 

Ezry Hollis, 
Up there to Waltham plain last fall, along 

o' the Cornwallis ? 2 
This sort o' thing aint jest like thet, — I 

wish thet I wuz f urcler, 3 — 

1 In relation to this expression, I cannot but think 
that Mr. Biglow has been too hasty in attributing it to 
me. Though Time be a comparatively innocent per- 
sonage to swear by, and though Longinus in his dis- 
course Hep! 'Yi/^ovs have commended timely oaths as not 
only a useful but sublime figure of speech, yet I have 
always kept my lips free from that abomination. Odi 



Mmepunce a day fer killin' folks comes 

kind o' low fer murder, 
(Wy I 've worked out to slarterin' some 

fer Deacon Cephas Billins, 
An' in the hardest times there wuz I oilers 

tetched ten shillins,) 
There 's sutthin' gits into my throat thet 

makes it hard to swaller, 
It comes so nateral to think about a hempen 

collar; 
It 's glory, — but, in spite o' all my tryin' 

to git callous, 
I feel a kind o' in a cart, aridin' to the 

gallus. 
But wen it comes to bem' killed, — I tell ye 

I felt streaked 
The fust time 't ever I found out wy bag- 

gonets wuz peaked; 
Here 's how it wuz: I started out to go to 

a fandango, 
The sentinul he ups an' sez, " Thet 's fur- 

der 'an you can go." 
"None o' your sarse," sez I; sez he, 

" Stan' back ! " " Aint you a bus- 
ter ? " 
Sez I, "I 'm up to all thet air, I guess 

I 've ben to muster; 
I know wy sentinuls air sot ; you aint agoin' 

to eat us; 
Caleb haint no monopoly to court the 

seenoreetas; 
My folks to hum air full ez good ez his'n 

be, by golly ! " 
An' so ez I wuz goin' by, not thinkin' wut 

would folly, 
The everlastin' cus he stuck his one- 
pronged pitchfork in me 
An' made a hole right thru my close ez ef 

I wuz an in'my. 

Wal, it beats all how big I felt hoorawin' 

in ole Funnel 
Wen Mister Bolles he gin the sword to our 

Lef tenant Cunnle, 
(It 's Mister Secondary Bolles, 4 thet writ 

the prize peace essay; 
Thet 's wy he did n't list himself along o' 

us, I dessay,) 

profanum vulgus, I hate your swearing and hectoring 
fellows. — H. W. 

2 i hait the Site of a feller with a muskit as I du pizn 
But their is fun to a cornwallis I aint agoin' to deny it. 
— H. B. 

3 he means Not quite so fur I guess. — H. B. 

4 the ignerant creeter means Sekketary ; but he 
oilers stuck to his books like cobbler's wax to an ile- 
stone. — H. B. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



i«5 



An' Rantoul, tu, talked pooty loud, but 

don't put his foot in it, 
Coz human life 's so sacred thet he 's 

principled agin it, — 
Though I myself can't rightly see it 's any 

wus achokin' on 'em, 
Than puttin' bullets thru their lights, or 

with a bagnet pokin' on 'em; 
How dreffle slick he reeled it off (like 

Blitz at our Lyceum 
Ahaulin' ribbins from his chops so quick 

you skeercely see 'em), 
• About the Anglo-Saxon race (an' saxons 

would be handy 
To du the buryin' down here upon the Rio 

Grandy), 
About our patriotic pas an' our star- 
spangled banner, 
Our country's bird alookin' on an' singin' 

out hosanner, 
An' how he (Mister B. himself) wuz happy 

f er Ameriky, — 
I felt, ez sister Patience sez, a leetle mite 

histericky. 
I felt, I swon, ez though it wuz a dreffle 

kind o' privilege 
Atrampin' round thru Boston streets 

among the gutter's drivelage ; 
I act'lly thought it wuz a treat to hear a 

little drummin', 
An' it did bonyfidy seem millanyum wuz 

acomin' 
Wen all on us got suits (darned like them 

wore in the state prison) 
An' every feller felt ez though all Mexico 

wuz hisn. 1 

This 'ere 's about the meanest place a 
skunk could wal diskiver 

(Saltillo 's Mexican, I b'lieve, fer wut we 
call Salt-river) ; 

The sort o' trash a feller gits to eat doos 
beat all nater, 

I 'd give a year's pay fer a smell o' one 
good blue-nose tater; 

The country here thet Mister Bolles de- 
clared to be so charmin' 



1 it must be aloud that thare 's a streak of nater in 
lovin' sho, but it sartinly is 1 of the curusest things in 
nater to see a rispecktable dri goods dealer (deekon off 
a chutch maybe) a riggin' himself out in the Weigh they 
du and struttin' round in the Reign aspilin' his trowsis 
and makin' wet goods of himself. Ef any thin's fool- 
isher and moor dicklus than militerry gloary it is mi- 
lishy gloary. — H. B. 

2 these fellers are verry proppilly called Rank 



Throughout is swarmin' with the most 

alarmin' kind o' varmin. 
He talked about delishis froots, but then 

it wuz a wopper all, 
The holl on 't 's mud an' prickly pears, 

with here an' there a chapparal; 
You see a feller peekin' out, an', fust you 

know, a lariat 
Is round your throat an' you a copse, 'fore 

you can say, " Wut air ye at ? " 2 
You never see sech darned gret bugs (it 

may not be irrelevant 
To say I 've seen a scarabceus pilularius 3 

big ez a year old elephant), 
The rigiment come up one day in time to 

stop a red bug 
From runnin' off with Cunnle Wright, — 't 

wuz jest a common cimex lectularius. 

One night I started up on eend an' thought 

I wuz to hum agin, 
I heern a horn, thinks I it 's Sol the fisher- 
man hez come agin, 
His bellowses is sound enough, — ez I 'm a 

livin' creeter, 
I felt a thing go thru my leg, — 't wuz 

nothin' more 'n a skeeter ! 
Then there 's the yaller fever, tu, they call 

it here el vomito, — 
(Come, thet wun't du, you landcrab there, 

I tell ye to le' go my toe ! 
My gracious ! it 's a scorpion thet 's took 

a shine to play with 't, 
I darsn't skeer the tarnal thing fer fear 

he 'd run away with 't.) 
Afore I come away from hum I hed a 

strong persuasion 
Thet Mexicans worn't human beans, 4 — an 

ourang outang nation, 
A sort o' folks a chap could kill an' never 

dream on 't arter, 
No more 'n a feller 'd dream o' pigs thet 

he hed hed to slarter; 
I 'd an idee thet they were built arter the 

darkie fashion all, 
An' kickin' colored folks about, you know, 

's a kind o' national: 



Heroes, and the more tha kill the ranker and more 
Herowick tha bekum. — H. B. 

3 it wuz " tumblebug " as he Writ it, but the parson 
put the Latten instid. i sed tother maid better meeter, 
but he said tha was eddykated peepl to Boston and tha 
would n't stan' it no how. idnow as tha wood and 
idnow as tha wood. — H. B. 

4 he means human beins, that 's wut he means, i 
spose he kinder thought tha wuz human beans ware 
the Xisle Poles comes from. — H. B. 



i86 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



But wen I jined I worn't so wise ez thet 

air queen o' Sheby, 
Fer, come to look at 'em, they aint much 

diff 'rent from wut we be, 
An' here we air ascrougin' 'em out o' thir 

own dominions, 
Ashelterin' 'em, ez Caleb sez, under our 

eagle's pinions, 
Wich means to take a feller up jest by the 

slack o' 's trowsis 
An' walk him Spanish clean right out o' 

all his homes an' houses; 
Wal, it doos seem a curus way, but then 

hooraw fer Jackson ! 
It must be right, fer Caleb sez it 's reg'lar 

Anglo-saxon. 
The Mex'cans don't fight fair, they say, 

they piz'n all the water, 
An' du amazin' lots o' things thet is n't 

wut they ough' to; 
Bein' they haint no lead, they make their 

bullets out o' copper 
An' shoot the darned things at us, tu, wich 

Caleb sez aint proper; 
He sez they 'd ough' to stan' right up an' 

let us pop 'em fairly 
(Guess wen he ketches 'em at thet he '11 

hev to git up airly), 
Thet our nation 's bigger 'n theirn an' so 

its rights air bigger, 
An' thet it 's all to make 'em free thet we 

air pullin' trigger, 
Thet Anglo Saxondom's idee 's abreakin' 

'em to pieces, 
An' thet idee 's thet every man doos jest 

wut he damn pleases; 
Ef I don't make his meanin' clear, perhaps 

in some respex I can, 
I know thet " every man " don't mean a 

nigger or a Mexican ; 
An' there 's another thing I know, an' thet 

is, ef these creeturs, 
Thet stick an Anglosaxon mask onto State- 
prison feeturs, 
Should come to Jaalam Centre fer to 

argify an' spout on 't, 
The gals 'ould count the silver spoons the 

minnit they cleared out on 't. 

This goin' ware glory waits ye haint one 

agreeable f eetur, 
An' ef it worn't fer wakin' snakes, I 'd 

home agin short meter; 
O, would n't I be off, quick time, ef 

't worn't thet I wuz sartin 



They 'd let the daylight into me to pay me 

fer desartin ! 
I don't approve o' tellin' tales, but jest to 

you I may state 
Our ossifers aint wut they wuz afore they 

left the Bay-state; 
Then it wuz " Mister Sawin, sir, you 're 

middlin' well now, be ye ? 
Step up an' take a nipper, sir; I 'm dreffle 

glad to see ye ; " 
But now it 's " Ware 's my eppylet ? here, 

Sawin, step an' fetch it ! 
An' mind your eye, be thund'rin' spry, or, 

damn ye, you shall ketch it ! " 
Wal, ez the Doctor sez, some pork will bile 

so, but by mighty, 
Ef I hed some on 'em to hum, I 'd give 

'em linkum vity, 
I 'd play the rogue's march on their hides 

an' other music follerin' — 
But I must close my letter here, fer one on 

'em 's ahollerin', 
These Anglosaxon ossifers, — wal, taint no 

use ajawin', 
I 'm saf e enlisted fer the war, 

Yourn, 

BIRDOFREDOM SAWIN. 

[Those have not been wanting (as, indeed, 
when hath Satan been to seek for attorneys ?) 
who have maintained that our late inroad upon 
Mexico was undertaken not so much for the 
avenging of any national quarrel, as for the 
spreading of free institutions and of Protestant- 
ism. Capita vix duabus Anticyris medenda ! 
Verily I admire that no pious sergeant among 
these new Crusaders beheld Martin Luther rid- 
ing at the front of the host upon a tamed ponti- 
fical bull, as, in that former invasion of Mexico, 
the zealous Gomara (spawn though he were of 
the Scarlet Woman) was favored with a vision 
of St. James of Compostella, skewering the 
infidels upon his apostolical lance. We read, 
also, that Pichard of the lion heart, having gone 
to Palestine on a similar errand of mercy, was 
divinely encouraged to cut the throats of such 
Paynims as refused to swallow the bread of life 
(doubtless that they might be thereafter inca- 
pacitated for swallowing the filthy gobbets of 
Mahound) by angels of heaven, who cried to the 
king and his knights, — Seigneurs, tuez ! tuez ! 
providentially using the French tongue, as 
being the only one understood by their auditors. 
This would argue for the pantoglottism of these 
celestial intelligences, while, on the other hand, 
the Devil, teste Cotton Mather, is unversed in 
certain of the Indian dialects. Yet must he be 
a semeiologist the most expert, making himself 
intelligible to every people and kindred by 
signs ; no other discourse, indeed, being needful, 
than such as the mackerel-fisher holds with his 
finned quarry, who, if other bait be wanting, 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



187 



can by a bare bit of white rag at the end of a 
string captivate those foolish fishes. Such pis- 
catorial persuasion is Satan cunning in. Before 
one he trails a hat and feather, or a bare feather 
without a hat ; before another, a Presidential 
chair or a tide-waiter's stool, or a pulpit in the 
city, no matter what. To us, dangling there 
over our heads, they seem junkets dropped 
out of the seventh heaven, sops dipped in nee- 
tar, but, once in our mouths, they are all one, 
bits of fuzzy cotton. 

This, however, by the way. It is time now 
revocare gradum. While so many miracles of 
this sort, vouched by eye-witnesses, have en- 
couraged the arms of Papists, not to speak of 
Echetlseus at Marathon and those Dioscuri 
(whom we must conclude imps of the pit) who 
sundry times captained the pagan Roman sol- 
diery, it is strange that our first American cru- 
sade was not in some such wise also signalized. 
Yet it is said that the Lord hath manifestly 
prospered our armies. This opens the ques- 
tion, whether, when our hands are strengthened 
to make great slaughter of our enemies, it be 
absolutely and demonstratively certain that 
this might is added to us from above, or 
whether some Potentate from an opposite quar- 
ter may not have a finger in it, as there are few 
pies into which his meddling digits are not 
thrust. Would the Sanctifier and Setter-apart 
of the seventh day have assisted in a victory 
gained on the Sabbath, as was one in the late 
war ? Do we not know from Josephus, that, 
careful of His decree, a certain river in Judsea 
abstained from flowing on the day of Rest ? 
Or has that day become less an object of His 
especial care since the year 1697, when so mani- 
fest a providence occurred to Mr. William 
Trowbridge, in answer to whose prayers, when 
he and all on shipboard with him were starving, 
a dolphin was sent daily, "which was enough 
to serve 'em ; only on Saturdays they still 
catched a couple, and on the Lord's Days they 
could catch none at all " ? Haply they might 
have been permitted, by way of mortification, 
to take some few sculpins (those banes of the 
salt-water angler), which unseemly fish would, 
moreover, have conveyed to them a symbol- 
ical reproof for their breach of the day, being 
known in the rude dialect of our mariners as 
Cape Cod Clergymen. 

It has been a refreshment to many nice con- 
sciences to know that our Chief Magistrate 
would not regard with eyes of approval the (by 
many esteemed) sinful pastime of dancing, and 
I own myself to be so far of that mind, that I 
could not but set my face against this Mexican 
Polka, though danced to the Presidential piping 
with a Gubernatorial second. If ever the coun- 
try should be seized with another such mania 
pro propaganda fide, I think it would be wise 
to fill our bombshells with alternate copies of 
the Cambridge Platform and the Thirty-nine 
Articles, which would produce a mixture of the 
highest explosive power, and to wrap every one 
of our cannon-balls in a leaf of the New Testa- 
ment, the reading of which is denied to those 



who sit in the darkness of Popery. Those iron 
evangelists would thus be able to disseminate 
vital religion and Gospel truth in quarters inac- 
cessible to the ordinary missionary. I have seen 
lads, unimpregnate with the more sublimated 
punctiliousness of Walton, secure pickerel, tak- 
ing their unwary siesta beneath the lily-pads 
too nigh the surface, with a gun and small shot. 
Why not, then, since gunpowder was unknown 
in the time of the Apostles (not to enter here 
upon the question whether it were discovered 
before that period by the Chinese), suit our 
metaphor to the age in which we live, and say 
shooters as well as fishers of men ? 

I do much fear that we shall be seized now 
and then with a Protestant fervor, as long as 
we have neighbor Naboths whose wallo wings in 
Papistical mire excite our horror in exact pro- 
portion to the size and desirableness of their 
vineyards. Yet I rejoice that some earnest 
Protestants have been made by this war, — I 
mean those who protested against it. Fewer 
they were than I could wish, for one might im- 
agine America to have been colonized by a tribe 
of those nondescript African animals the Aye- 
Ayes, so difficult a word is No to us all. There 
is some malformation or defect of the vocal 
organs, which either prevents our uttering it 
at all, or gives it so thick a pronunciation as to 
be unintelligible. A mouth filled with the 
national _ pudding, or watering in expectation 
thereof, is wholly incompetent to this refractory 
monosyllable. An abject and herpetic Public 
Opinion is the Pope, the Anti-Christ, for us to 
protest against e corde cordium. And by what 
College of Cardinals is this our God's-vicar, our 
binder and looser, elected ? Very like, by the 
sacred conclave of Tag, Rag, and Bobtail, in 
the gracious atmosphere of the grog-shop. Yet 
it is of this that we must all be puppets. This 
thumps the pulpit-cushion, this guides the edi- 
tor's pen, this wags the senator's tongue. This 
decides what Scriptures are canonical, and shuf- 
fles Christ away into the Apocrypha. Accord- 
ing to that sentence fathered upon Solon, Ob™ 

8r]fx6(TLOv kclkov epxerat oi/ca6' knacTTw. This unclean 

spirit is skilful to assume various shapes. I 
have known it to enter my own study and 
nudge my elbow of a Saturday, under the sem- 
blance of a wealthy member of my congregation. 
It were a great blessing, if every particular of 
what in the sum we call popular sentiment 
could carry about the name of its manufacturer 
stamped legibly upon it. I gave a stab under 
the fifth rib to that pestilent fallacy, — "Our 
country, right or wrong, " — by tracing its origi- 
nal to a speech of Ensign Cilley at a dinner of 
the Bungtown Fencibles. — H. W.] 

No. Ill 
WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS 

[A few remarks on the following verses will 
not be out of place. The satire in them was 
not meant to have any personal, but only a 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



general, application. Of the gentleman upon 
whose letter they were intended as a commen- 
tary Mr. Biglow had never heard, till he saw 
the letter itself. The position of the satirist is 
oftentimes one which he would not have chosen, 
had the election been left to himself. In at- 
tacking bad principles, he is obliged to select 
some individual who has made himself their 
exponent, and in whom they are impersonate, to 
the end that what he says may not, through 
ambigiiity, be dissipated tenues in auras. For 
what says Seneca ? Longum iter per prcecepta, 
breve et efficace per exempla. A bad principle is 
comparatively harmless while it continues to be 
an abstraction, nor can the general mind com- 
prehend it fully till it is printed in that large 
type which all men can read at sight, namely, 
the life and character, the sayings and doings, 
of particular persons. It is one of the cun- 
ningest fetches of Satan, that he never exposes 
himself directly to our arrows, but, still dodg- 
ing behind this neighbor or that acquaint- 
ance, compels us to wound him through them, 
if at all. He holds our affections as hostages, 
the while he patches up a truce with our con- 
science. 

Meanwhile, let us not forget that the aim of 
the true satirist is not to be severe upon persons, 
but only upon falsehood, and, as Truth and 
Falsehood start from the same point, and some- 
times even go along together for a little way, 
his business is to follow the path of the latter 
after it diverges, and to show her floundering in 
the bog at the end of it. Truth is quite beyond 
the reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity 
in her, that she can no more be made ridiculous 
than an oak or a pine. The danger of the satirist 
is, that continual use may deaden his sensibility 
to the force of language. He becomes more and 
more liable to strike harder than he knows or 
intends. He may be careful to put on his box- 
ing-gloves, and yet forget that, the older they 
grow, the more plainly may the knuckles inside 
be felt. Moreover, in the heat of contest, the 
eye is insensibly drawn to the crown of victory, 
whose tawdry tinsel glitters through that dust 
of the ring which obscures Truth's wreath of 
simple leaves. I have sometimes thought that 
my young friend, Mr. Biglow, needed a moni- 
tory hand laid on his arm, — aliquid sufflami- 
nandus erat. I have never thought it good hus- 
bandry to water the tender plants of reform with 
aquafortis, yet, where so much is to do in the 
beds, he were a sorry gardener who should wage 
a whole day's war with an iron scuffle on those 
ill weeds that make the garden-walks of life 
unsightly, when a sprinkle of Attic salt will 
wither them up. Est ars etiam inaledicendi, 
says Scaliger, and truly it is a hard thing to 
say where the graceful gentleness of the lamb 
merges in downright sheepishness. We may 
conclude with worthy and wise Dr. Fuller, that 
" one may be a lamb in private wrongs, but in 
hearing general affronts to goodness they are 
asses which are not lions." — H. W.] 



Guvener B. is a sensible man; 

He stays to his home an' looks arter his 
folks; 
He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can, 
An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes; 
But John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B. 

My ! aint it terrible ? Wut shall we du ? 
We can't never choose him o' course, — 
thet 's flat; 
Guess we shall hev to come round, (don 't 
you?) 
An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all 
that; 

Fer John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B. 

Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man: 

He 's ben on all sides thet give places or 
pelf; 
But consistency still wuz a part of his 
plan, — 
He 's ben true to one party, — an' thet is 
himself; — 

So John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. 

Gineral C. he goes in fer the war ; 

He don't vally princerple more 'n an old 
cud; 
Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, 
But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' 
blood ? 

So John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. 

We were gittin' on nicely up here to our 
village, 
With good old idees o' wut's right an' 
wut aint, 
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war 
an' pillage, 
An' thet eppyletts worn't the best mark 
of a saint; 

But John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez this kind o' thing's an exploded 
idee. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



The side of our country must oilers be took, 
An' Presidunt Polk, you know, he is our 
country. 
An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a 
book 
Puts the debit to him, an' to us the per 
contry; 

An' John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T. 

Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts 
lies; 
Sez they 're nothin' on airth but jest fee, 
faw, fum; 
An' thet all this big talk of our destinies 
Is half on it ign'ance, an' t'other half 
rum; 

But John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez it aint no sech thing; an', of course, 
so must we. 

Parson Wilbur sez he never heerd in his life 
Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their 
s waller- tail coats, 
An' marched round in front of a drum an' 
a fife, 
To git some on 'em office, an' some on 'em 
votes ; 

But John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez they did n't know everythin' down 
in Judee. 

Wal, it 's a marcy we 've gut folks to tell us 
The rights an' the wrongs o' these mat- 
ters, I vow, — 
God sends country lawyers, an' other wise 
fellers, 
To start the world's team wen it gits in a 
slough; 

Fer John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez the world '11 go right, ef he hollers 
out Gee! 

[The attentive reader will doubtless have per- 
ceived in the foregoing poem an allusion to that 
pernicious sentiment, — " Our country, right or 
wrong." It is an abuse of language to call a 
certain portion of land, much more, certain per- 
sonages, elevated for the time being to high sta- 
tion, our country. I would not sever nor loosen 
a single one of those ties by which we are united 
to the spot of our birth, nor minish by a tittle 
the respect due to the Magistrate. I love our 



own Bay State too well to do the one, and as for 
the other, I have myself for nigh forty years 
exercised, however unworthily, the function of 
Justice of the Peace, having been called thereto 
by the unsolicited kindness of that most ex- 
cellent man and upright patriot, Caleb Strong. 
Patrice fumus igne alieno luculentior is best 
qualified with this, — Ubi libertas, ibi patria. 
We are inhabitants of two worlds, and owe a 
double, but not a divided, allegiance. In virtue 
of our clay, this little ball of earth exacts a 
certain loyalty of us, while, in our capacity as 
spirits, we are admitted citizens of an invisible 
and holier fatherland. There is a patriotism of 
the soul whose claim absolves us from our other 
and terrene fealty. Our true country is that ideal 
realm which we represent to ourselves under the 
names of religion, duty, and the like. Our terres- 
trial organizations are but far-off approaches to 
so fair a model, and all they are verily traitors 
who resist not any attempt to divert them from 
this their original intendment. When, therefore, 
one would have us to fling up our caps and shout 
with the multitude, — " Our country, however 
bounded ! " he demands of us that we sacrifice 
the larger to the less, the higher to the lower, 
and that we yield to the imaginary claims of a 
few acres of soil our duty and privilege as liege- 
men of Truth. Our true country is bounded on 
the north and the south, on the east and the 
west, by Justice, and when she oversteps that 
invisible boundary- line by so much as a hair's- 
breadth, she ceases to be our mother, and chooses 
rather to be looked upon quasi noverca. That 
is a hard choice when our earthly love of country 
calls upon us to tread one path and our duty 
points us to another. We must make as noble 
and becoming an election as did Penelope be- 
tween Icarius and Ulysses. Veiling our faces, 
we must take silently the hand of Duty to 
follow her. 

Shortly after the publication of the foregoing 
poem, there appeared some comments upon it 
in one of the public prints which seemed to call 
for animadversion. I accordingly addressed to 
Mr. Buckingham, of the Boston Courier, the 
following letter. 

" Jaalam, November 4, 1847. 
" To the Editor of the Courier : 

" Respected Sir, — Calling at the post- 
office this morning, our worthy and efficient 
postmaster offered for my perusal a paragraph 
in the Boston Morning Post of the 3d instant, 
wherein certain effusions of the pastoral muse 
are attributed to the pen of Mr. James Russell 
Lowell. For aught I know or can affirm to 
the contrary, this Mr. Lowell may be a very 
deserving person and a youth of parts (though 
I have seen verses of his which I could never 
rightly understand) ; and if he be such, he, I 
am certain, as well as I, would be free from 
any proclivity to appropriate to himself what- 
ever of credit (or discredit) may honestly be- 
long to another. I am confident, that, in pen- 
ning these few lines, I am only forestalling a 
disclaimer from that young gentleman, whose 



i 9 o 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



silence hitherto, when rumor pointed to him- 
ward, has excited in my bosom mingled emo- 
tions of sorrow and surprise. Well may my 
young parishioner, Mr. Biglow, exclaim with 
the poet, 

" ' Sic vos non vobis,' &c. ; 

though, in saying this, I would not convey the 
impression that he is a proficient in the Latin 
tongue, — the tongue, I might add, of a Horace 
and a Tully. 

" Mr. B. does not employ his pen, I can safely 
say, for any lucre of worldly gain, or to be ex- 
alted by the carnal plaudits of men, digito 
monstrari, &c. He does not wait upon Provi- 
dence for mercies, and in his heart mean merces. 
But I should esteem myself as verily deficient 
in my duty (who am his friend and in some un- 
worthy sort his spiritual fidus Achates, &c), if I 
did not step forward to claim for him whatever 
measure of applause might be assigned to him 
by the judicious. 

" If this were a fitting occasion, I might ven- 
ture here a brief dissertation touching the man- 
ner and kind of my young friend's poetry. But 
I dubitate whether this abstruser sort of specu- 
lation (though enlivened by some apposite in- 
stances from Aristophanes) would sufficiently 
interest your oppidan readers. As regards their 
satirical tone, and their plainness of speech, I 
will only say, that, in my pastoral experience, I 
have found that the Arch-Enemy loves nothing 
better than to be treated as a religious, moral, 
and intellectual being, and that there is no 
apage Sathanas ! so potent as ridicule. But, it 
is a kind of weapon that must have a button of 
good-nature on the point of it. 

" The productions of Mr. B. have been stig- 
matized in some quarters as unpatriotic ; but I 
can vouch that he loves his native soil with 
that hearty, though discriminating, attachment 
which springs from an intimate social inter- 
course of many years' standing. In the plough- 
ing season, no one has a deeper share in the 
well-being of the country than he. If Dean 
Swift were right in saying that he who makes 
two blades of grass grow where one grew be- 
fore confers a greater benefit on the state than 
he who taketh a city, Mr. B. might exhibit a 
fairer claim to the Presidency than General 
Scott himself. I think that some of those 
disinterested lovers of the hard-handed demo- 
cracy, whose fingers have never touched any- 
thing rougher than the dollars of our common 
country, would hesitate to compare palms with 
him. It would do your heart good, respected 
Sir, to see that young man mow. He cuts a 
cleaner and wider swath than any in this town. 

" But it is time for me to be at my Post. It 
is very clear that my young friend's shot has 
struck the lintel, for the Post is shaken (Amos 
ix. 1). The editor of that paper is a strenuous 
advocate of the Mexican war, and a colonel, as 
I am given to understand. I presume, that, 
being necessarily absent in Mexico, he has left 
his journal in some less judicious hands. At 
any rate, the Post has been too swift on this 



occasion. It could hardly have cited a more 
incontrovertible line from any poem than that 
which it has selected for animadversion, 
namely, — 

" ' We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.' 

" K the Post maintains the converse of this 
proposition, it can hardly be considered as a 
safe guide-post for the moral and religious por- 
tions of its party, however many other excellent 
qualities of a post it may be blessed with. 
There is a sign in London on which is painted, 
— ' The Green Man.' It would do very well as 
a portrait of any individual who should support 
so unseriptural a thesis. As regards the lan- 
guage of the line in question, I am bold to say 
that He who readeth the hearts of men will 
not account any dialect unseemly which con- 
veys a sound and pious sentiment. I could 
wish that such sentiments were more common, 
however uncouthly expressed. Saint Ambrose 
affirms, that Veritas a quocunque (why not, then, 
quomodocunque ?) dicatur, a spiritu sancto est. 
Digest also this of Baxter : ' The plainest words 
are the most profitable oratory in the weighti- 
est matters.' 

" When the paragraph in question was shown 
to Mr. Biglow, the only part of it which seemed 
to give him any dissatisfaction was that which 
classed him with the Whig party. He says, 
that, if resolutions are a nourishing kind of 
diet, that party must be in a very hearty and 
flourishing condition ; for that they have qui- 
etly eaten more good ones of their own bak- 
ing than he could have conceived to be possi- 
ble without repletion. He has been for some 
years past (I regret to say) an ardent opponent 
of those sound doctrines of protective policy 
which form so prominent a portion of the creed, 
of that party. I confess, that, in some discus- 
sions which I have had with him on this point in 
my study, he has displayed a vein of obstinacy 
which I had not hitherto detected in his compo- 
sition. He is also (horresco ref evens) infected in 
no small measure with the peculiar notions of 
a print called the Liberator, whose heresies I 
take every proper opportunity of combating, 
and of which, I thank God, I have never read 
a single line. 

" I did not see Mr. B.'s verses until they ap- 
peared in print, and there is certainly one thing 
in them which I consider highly improper. I 
allude to the personal references to myself by 
name. To confer notoriety on an humble indi- 
vidual who is laboring quietly in his vocation, 
and who keeps his cloth as free as he can from 
the dust of the political arena (though voz mihi 
si non evangelizavero) , is no doubt an indeco- 
rum. The sentiments which he attributes to 
me I will not deny to be mine. They were em- 
bodied, though in a different form, in a dis- 
course preached upon the last day of public 
fasting, and were acceptable to my entire 
people (of whatever political views), except the 
postmaster, who dissented ex officio.^ I observe 
that you sometimes devote a portion of your 
paper to a religious summary. I should be 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



191 



well pleased to furnish a copy of ray discourse 
for insertion in this department of your instruc- 
tive journal. By omitting- the advertisements, 
it might easily be got within the limits of a 
single number, and I venture to insure you the 
sale of some scores of copies in this town. I 
will cheerfully render myself responsible for 
ten. It might possibly be advantageous to is- 
sue it as an extra. But perhaps you will not 
esteem it an object, and I will not press it. My 
offer does not spring from any weak desire of 
seeing my name in print ; for I can enjoy this 
satisfaction at any time by turning to the Tri- 
ennial Catalogue of the University, where it 
also possesses that added emphasis of Italics 
with which those of my calling are distin- 
guished. 

"I would simply add, that I continue to fit 
ingenuous youth for college, and that I have 
two spacious and airy sleeping apartments at 
this moment unoccupied. Ingenuas didicisse, 
&g. Terms, which vary according to the circum- 
stances of the parents, may be known on appli- 
cation to me by letter, post-paid. In all eases 
the lad will be expected to fetch his own towels. 
This rule, Mrs. W. desires me to add, has no 
exceptions. 

"Respectfully, your obedient servant, 

" HOMER WILBUR, A. M. 

" P. S. Perhaps the last paragraph may look 
like an attempt to obtain the insertion of my 
circular gratuitously. If it should appear to 
you in that light, I desire that you would erase 
it, or charge for it at the usual rates, and deduct 
the amount from the proceeds in your hands 
from the sale of my discourse, when it shall be 
printed. My circular is much longer and more 
explicit, and will be forwarded without charge 
to any who may desire it. It has been very 
neatly executed on a letter sheet, by a very de- 
serving printer, who attends upon my ministry, 
and is a creditable specimen of the typographic 
art. I have one hung over my mantelpiece in 
a neat frame, where it makes a beautiful and 
appropriate ornament, and balances the profile 
of Mrs. W., cut with her toesJ>y the young lady 
born without arms. 

"H. W." 

I have in the foregoing letter mentioned Gen- 
eral Scott in connection with the Presidency, 
because I have been given to understand that 
he has blown to pieces and otherwise caused to 
be destroyed more Mexicans than any other 
commander. His claim would therefore be de- 
servedly considered the strongest. Until accu- 
rate returns of the Mexicans killed, wounded, 
and maimed be obtained, it will be difficult to 
settle these nice points of precedence. Should 
it prove that any other officer has been more 
meritorious and destructive than General S., 
and has thereby rendered himself more worthy 
of the confidence and support of the conservative 
portion _ of our community, I shall cheerfully 
insert his name, instead of that of General S., 
in a future edition. It may. be thought, like- 



wise, that General S. has invalidated his claims 
by too much attention to the decencies of ap- 
parel, and the habits belonging to a gentleman. 
These abstruser points of statesmanship are be- 
yond my scope. I wonder not that successful 
military achievement should attract the admira- 
tion of the multitude. Rather do I rejoice with 
wonder to behold how rapidly this sentiment is 
losing its hold upon the popular mind. It is 
related of Thomas Warton, the second of that 
honored name who held the office of Poetry 
Professor at Oxford, that, when one wished to 
find him, being absconded, as was his wont, 
in some obscure alehouse, he was counselled to 
traverse the city with a drum and fife, the sound 
of which inspiring music would be sure to draw 
the Doctor from his retirement into the street. 
We are all more or less bitten with this martial 
insanity. Nescio qua dulcedine . . . cunctos ducit. 
I confess to some infection of that itch myself. 
When I see a Brigadier -General maintaining his 
insecure elevation in the saddle under the severe 
fire of the training-field, and when I remember 
that some military enthusiasts, through haste, 
inexperience, or an over-desire to lend reality 
to those fictitious combats, will sometimes dis- 
charge their ramrods, I cannot but admire, 
while I deplore, the mistaken devotion of those 
heroic officers. Semel insanivimus omnes. I 
was myself, during the late war with Great 
Britain, chaplain of a regiment, which was for- 
tunately never called to active military duty. 
I mention this circumstance with regret rather 
than pride. Had I been summoned, to actual 
warfare, I trust that I might have been strength- 
ened to bear myself after the manner of that 
reverend father in our New England Israel, Dr. 
Benjamin Colman, who, as we are told in Tu- 
rell's life of him, when the vessel in which he 
had taken passage for England was attacked 
by a French privateer, " fought like a philoso- 
pher and a Christian, . . . and prayed all the 
while he charged and fired." As this note is 
already long, I shall not here enter upon a dis- 
cussion of the question, whether Christians may 
lawfully be soldiers. I think it sufficiently evi- 
dent, that, during the first two centuries of the 
Christian era, at least, the two professions were 
esteemed incompatible. Consult Jortin on this 
head. — H. W.] 



REMARKS OF INCREASE 
O'PHACE, ESQUIRE, 



D. 



AT AN EXTRUMPERY CAUCUS IN STATE 
STREET, REPORTED BY MR. H. BIG- 
LOW 

[The ingenious reader will at once understand 
that no such speech as the following was ever 
totidem verbis pronounced. But there are simpler 
and less guarded wits, for the satisfying of which 



192 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



such an explanation may be needful. For there 
are certain invisible lines, which as Truth 
successively overpasses, she becomes Untruth 
to one and another of us, as a large river, 
flowing from one kingdom into another, some- 
times takes a new name, albeit the waters 
undergo no change, how small soever. There is, 
moreover, a truth of fiction more veracious 
than the truth of fact, as that of the Poet, which 
represents to us things and events as they ought 
to be, rather than servilely copies them as they 
are imperfectly imaged in the crooked and 
smoky glass of our mundane affairs. It is this 
which makes the speech of Antonius, though 
originally spoken in no wider a forum than the 
brain of Shakespeare, more historically valuable 
than that other which Appian has reported, by 
as much as the understanding of the English- 
man was more comprehensive than that of the 
Alexandrian. Mr. Biglow, in the present in- 
stance, has only made use of a license assumed 
by all the historians of antiquity, who put into 
the mouths of various characters such words as 
seem to them most fitting to the occasion and 
to the speaker. If it be objected that no such 
oration could ever have been delivered, I answer, 
that there are few assemblages for speech- 
making which do not better deserve the title of 
Parliamentum Indoctorum than did the sixth 
Parliament of Henry the Fourth, and that men 
still continue to have as much faith in the Or- 
acle of Fools as ever Pantagruel had. Howell, 
in his letters, recounts a merry tale of a certain 
ambassador of Queen Elizabeth, who, having 
written two letters, — one to her Majesty, and 
the other to his wife, — directed them at cross- 
purposes, so that the Queen was beducked and 
bedeared and requested to send a change of 
hose, and the wife was beprincessed and other- 
wise unwontedly besuperlatived, till the one 
feared for the wits of her ambassador, and the 
other for those of her husband. In like manner 
it may be presumed that our speaker has misdi- 
rected some of his thoughts, and given to the 
whole theatre what he would have wished to 
confide only to a select auditory at the back of 
the curtain. For it is seldom that we can get 
any frank utterance from men, who address, 
for the most part, a Buncombe either in this 
world or the next. As for their audiences, it 
may be trulysaid of our people, that they enjoy 
one political institution in common with the an- 
cient Athenians: I mean a certain profitless 
kind of ostracism, wherewith, nevertheless, they 
seem hitherto well enough content. For in 
Presidential elections, and other affairs of the 
sort, whereas I observe that the oysters fall to 
the lot of comparatively few, the shells (such as 
the privileges of voting as they are told to do by 
the ostrivori aforesaid, and of huzzaing at public 
meetings) are very liberally distributed among 



1 The speaker is of a different mind from Tully, who, 
in his recently discovered tractate De Republica, tells 
us, Nee vero habere virtutem satis est, quasi artem 
aliquam, nisi utare, and from our Milton, who says : 
" I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, un- 



the people, as being their prescriptive and quite 
sufficient portion. 

The occasion of the speech is supposed to be 
Mr. Palfrey's refusal to vote for the Whig can- 
didate for the Speakership. — H. W.] 

No ? Hez he ? He haint, though ? Wut ? 

Voted agin him ? 
Ef the bird of our country could ketch him, 

she 'd skin him ; 
I seem 's though I see her, with wrath in 

each quill, 
Like a chancery lawyer, afilin' her bill, 
An' grindin' her talents ez sharp ez all 

nater, 
To pounce like a writ on the back o' the 

traitor. 
Forgive me, my friends, ef I seem to be het, 
But a crisis like this must with vigor be 

met; 
Wen an Arnold the star-spangled banner 

bestains, 
Holl Fourth o' Julys seem to bile in my 

veins. 

Who ever 'd ha' thought sech a pisonous rig 
Would be run by a chap thet wuz chose fer 

a Wig? 
" We knowed wut his princerples wuz 'fore 

we sent him " ? 
Wut wuz there in them from this vote to 

pervent him ? 
A marcif ul Providunce fashioned us holler 
O' purpose thet we might our princerples 

s waller; 
It can hold any quantity on 'em, the belly 

can, 
An' bring 'em up ready fer use like the 

pelican, 
Or more like the kangaroo, who (wich is 

stranger) 
Puts her family into her pouch wen there 's 

danger. 
Aint princerple precious ? then, who 's 

goin' to use it 
Wen there 's resk o' some chap 's gittin' up 

to abuse it ? 
I can't tell the wy on't, but nothin' is so 

sure 
Ez thet princerple kind o' gits spiled by 
exposure ; 1 



exercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and 
sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that 
immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and 
heat." — Areop. He had taken the words out of the 
s mouth, without knowing it, and might well 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



193 



A man thet lets all sorts o' folks git a sight 

on 't 
Ough' to hev it all took right away, every 

mite on 't; 
Ef he can't keep it all to himself wen it 's 

wise to, 
He aint one it's fit to trust nothin' so nice to. 

Besides, ther 's a wonderful power in lati- 
tude 

To shift a man's morril relations an' atti- 
tude; 

Some flossifers think thet a fakkilty 's 
granted 

The minnit it 's proved to be thoroughly 
wanted, 

Thet a change o' demand makes a change 
o' condition, 

An' thet everythin' 's nothin' except by 
position; 

Ez, fer instance, thet rubber-trees fust be- 
gun bearin' 

Wen p'litikle conshunces come into wear- 
in', 

Thet the fears of a monkey, whose holt 
chanced to fail, 

Drawed the vertibry out to a prehensile 
tail; 

So, wen one 's chose to Congriss, ez soon ez 
he 's in it, 

A collar grows right round his neck in a 
minnit, 

An' sartin it is thet a man cannot be strict 

In bein' himself, wen he gits to the Dees- 
trict, 

Fer a coat thet sets wal here in ole Massa- 
chusetts, 

Wen it gits on to Washinton, somehow 
askew sets. 

Resolves, do you say, o' the Springfield 

Convention ? 
Thet 's percisely the pint I was goin' to 

mention; 
Resolves air a thing we most gen'ally keep 

ill, 
They 're a cheap kind 'o dust fer the eyes 

o' the people; 
A parcel o' delligits jest git together 
An' chat fer a spell o' the crops an' the 

weather, 



exclaim with Donatus (if Saint Jerome's tutor may 
stand sponsor for a curse), Pereant qui ante nos nostra 
dixerint ! — H. W. 



Then, comin' to order, they squabble awile 

An' let off the speeches they 're ferful '11 
spile ; 

Then — Resolve, — Thet we wunt hev an 
inch o' slave territory; 

Thet Presidunt Polk's holl perceedins air 
very tory; 

Thet the war is a damned war, an' them 
thet enlist in it 

Should hev a cravat with a dreffle tight 
twist in it; 

Thet the war is a war fer the spreadin' o' 
slavery; 

Thet our army desarves our best thanks 
fer their bravery; 

Thet we 're the original friends o' the 
nation, 

All the rest air a paltry an' base fabrica- 
tion; 

Thet we highly respect Messrs. A, B, 
an' C, 

An' ez deeply despise Messrs. E, F, an' G. 

In this way they go to the eend o' the 
chapter, 

An' then they bust out in a kind of a rap- 
tur 

About their own vartoo, an' folks's stone- 
blindness 

To the men thet 'ould actilly do 'em a 
kindness, — 

The American eagle, — the Pilgrims thet 
landed, — 

Till on ole Plymouth Rock they git finally 
stranded. 

Wal, the people they listen an' say, " Thet 's 
the ticket; 

Ez fer Mexico, 't aint no great glory to 
lick it, 

But 't would be a darned shame to go pull- 
in' o' triggers 

To extend the aree of abusin' the nig- 
gers." 

So they march in percession, an' git up 
hooraws, 

An' tramp thru the mud fer the good o' the 
cause, 

An' think they 're a kind o' fulfillin' the 
prophecies, 

Wen they 're on'y jest changin' the holders 
of offices; 

Ware A sot afore, B is comf'tably seated, 

One humbug 's victor'ous an' t' other de- 
feated, 



194 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



Each honnable doughface gits jest wut he 

axes, 
An' the people, — their annooal sof t-sodder 

an' taxes. 

Now, to keep unimpaired all these glorious 

feeturs 
Thet characterize morril an' reasonin' cree- 

turs, 
Thet give every paytriot all he can cram, 
Thet oust the untrustworthy Presidunt 

Flam, 
An' stick honest Presidunt Sham in his 

place, 
To the manifest gain o' the holl human 

race, 
An' to some indervidgewals on 't in par- 
tickler, 
Who love Public Opinion an' know how to 

tickle her, — 
I say thet a party with gret aims like these 
Must stick jest ez close ez a hive full o' 

bees. 

I 'm willin' a man should go tollable strong 
Agin wrong in the abstract, fer thet kind 

o' wrong 
Is oilers unpop'lar an' never gits pitied, 
Because it 's a crime no one never com- 
mitted; 
But he mus' n't be hard on partickler sins, 
Coz then he '11 be kickin' the people's own 

shins ; 
On'y look at the Demmercrats, see wut 

they 've done 
Jest simply by stickin' together like fun; 
They've sucked us right into a mis'able 

war 
Thet no one on airth aint responsible for; 
They 've run us a hundred cool millions in 

debt 
(An' fer Demmercrat Homers ther 's good 

plums left yet) ; 
They talk agin tayriffs, but act fer a high 

one, 
An' so coax all parties to build up their 

Zion; 
To the people they 're oilers ez slick ez mo- 



An' butter their bread on both sides with 

The Masses, 
Half o' whom they 've persuaded, by way 

of a joke, 
Thet Washinton's mantelpiece fell upon 

Polk. 



Now all o' these blessin's the Wigs might 

ei W> 
Ef they 'd gumption enough the right means 

to imploy; 1 
Fer the silver spoon born in Dermoc'acy's 

mouth 
Is a kind of a scringe thet they hev to the 

South ; 
Their masters can cuss 'em an' kick 'em an' 

wale 'em, 
An' they notice it less 'an the ass did to Ba- 
laam; 
In this way they screw into second-rate 

offices 
Wich the slaveholder thinks 'ould substract 

too much off his ease; 
The file-leaders, I mean, du, fer they, by 

their wiles, 
Unlike the old viper, grow fat on their files. 
Wal, the Wigs hev been tryin' to grab all 

this prey f rum 'em 
An' to hook this nice spoon o' good fortin' 

away frum 'em, 
An' they might ha' succeeded, ez likely ez 

not, 
In lickin' the Demmercrats all round the 

lot, 
Ef it warn't the't, wile all faithful Wigs 

were their knees on, 
Some stuffy old codger would holler out, ■ — 

"Treason! 
You must keep a sharp eye on a dog thet 

hez bit you once, 
An' / aint agoin' to cheat my constitoo- 

unts," — 
Wen every fool knows thet a man repre- 
sents 
Not the fellers thet sent him, but them on 

the fence, — 
Impartially ready to jump either side 
An' make the fust use of a turn o' the 

tide, — 
The waiters on Providunce here in the city, 
Who compose wut they call a State Centerl 

Committy. 
Constitoounts air hendy to help a man in, 
But arterwards don't weigh the heft of a 

pin. 
Wy, the people can't all live on Uncle Sam's 

pus, 
So they 've nothin' to du with 't fer better 

or wus; 



l That was a pithy saying of Persius, and fits our 
politicians without a wrinkle, — Magisler arlis, inge- 
niique largitor venter. — H. W. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



195 



It 's the folks thet air kind o' brought up 

to depend on 't 
Thet hev any consarn in % an' thet is the 

end on 't. 
Now here wuz New England ahevin' the 

honor 
Of a chance at the Speakership showered 

upon her; — 
Do you say, " She don't want no more 

Speakers, but fewer; 
She 's hed plenty o' them, wut she wants is 

a doer " ? 
Fer the matter o' thet, it 's notorous in town 
Thet her own representatives du her quite 

brown. 
But thet 's nothin' to du with it; wut right 

hed Palfrey 
To mix himself up with fanatical small 

fry? 
Warn't we gittin' on prime with our hot 

an' cold blowin', 
Acondemnin' the war wilst we kep' it 

agoin' ? 
We 'd assumed with gret skill a command- 
in' position, 
On this side or thet, no one could n't tell 

wich one, 
So, wutever side wipped, we 'd a chance at 

the plunder 
An' could sue fer infringin' our paytented 

thunder; 
We were ready to vote fer whoever wuz 

eligible, 
Ef on all pints at issoo he 'd stay unintelli- 
gible. 
Wal, sposin' we hed to gulp down our per- 

fessions, 
We were ready to come out next mornin' 

with fresh ones; 
Besides, ef we did, 't was our business alone, 
Fer could n't we du wut we would with our 

own ? 
An' ef a man can, wen pervisions hev riz so, 
Eat up his own words, it 's a marcy it is so. 
Wy, these chaps f rum the North, with back- 
bones to 'em, darn 'em, 
'Ould be wuth more 'an Gennle Tom Thumb 

is to Barnum: 
Ther 's enough thet to office on this very 

plan grow, 
By exhibitin' how very small a man can 

grow; 
But an M. C. frum here oilers hastens to 

state he 
Belongs to the order called invertebraty, 



Wence some gret filologists judge primy 

fashy 
Thet M. C. is M. T. by paronomashy; 
An' these few exceptions air loosus naytury 
Folks 'ould put down their quarters to stare 

at, like fury. 

It 's no use to open the door o' success, 
Ef a member can bolt so fer nothin' or less; 
Wy, all o' them grand constitootional pillers 
Our fore-fathers fetched with 'em over the 

billers, 
Them pillers the people so soundly hev 

slep' on, 
Wile to slav'ry, invasion, an' debt they were 

swep' on, 
Wile our Destiny higher an' higher kep' 

mountin' 
(Though I guess folks '11 stare wen she 

hends her account in), 
Ef members in this way go kickin' agin 'em, 
They wunt hev so much ez a feather left in 



An', ez fer this Palfrey, 1 we thought wen 

we 'd gut him in, 
He 'd go kindly in wutever harness we put 

him in; 
Supposin' we did know thet he wuz a peace 

man ? 
Doos he think he can be Uncle Sammle's 

policeman, 
An' wen Sam gits tipsy an kicks up a riot, 
Lead him off to the lockup to snooze till 

he 's quiet ? 
Wy, the war is a war thet true paytriots 

can bear, ef 
It leads to the fat promised land of a 

tayriff; 
We don't go an' fight it, nor aint to be driv 

on, 
Nor Demmercrats nuther, thet hev wut to 

live on; 
Ef it aint jest the thing thet 's well pleasin' 

to God, 
It makes us thought highly on elsewhere 

abroad ; 
The Rooshian black eagle looks blue in his 

eerie 
An' shakes both his heads wen he hears o' 

Monteery ; 
In the Tower Victory sets, all of a fluster, 

1 There is truth yet in this of Juvenal, — 

"Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas." — H. W» 



196 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



An' reads, with locked doors, how we won 

Cherry Buster; 
An' old Philip Lewis — thet come an' kep' 

school here 
Fer the mere sake o' scorin' his ryalist 

ruler 
On the tenderest part of our kings in 

futuro — 
Hides his crown underneath an old shut in 

his bureau, 
Breaks off in his brags to a suckle o' merry 



How he often hed hided young native 

Amerrikins, 
An' turnin' quite faint in the midst of his 

fooleries, 
Sneaks down stairs to bolt the front door 

o' the Tooleries. 1 
You say, " We 'd ha' scared 'em by grow- 
in' in peace, 
A plaguy sight more then by bobberies like 

these"? 
Who is it dares say thet our naytional 

eagle 
Wun't much longer be classed with the 

birds thet air regal, 
Coz theirn be hooked beaks, an' she, arter 

this slaughter, 
'11 bring back a bill ten times longer 'n 

she 'd ough' to ? 
Wut 's your name ? Come, I see ye, you 

up-country feller, 
You 've put me out severil times with your 

beller; 
Out with it ! Wut ? Biglow ? I say no- 
thin' f urder, 
Thet feller would like nothin' better 'n a 

murder; 
He 's a traiter, blasphemer, an' wut ruther 

worse is, 
He puts all his ath'ism in dreffle bad verses ; 
Socity aint safe till sech monsters air out 

on it, 
Refer to the Post, ef you hev the least 

doubt on it; 
Wy, he goes agin war, agin indirect taxes, 
Agin sellin' wild lands 'cept to settlers 

with axes, 

1 Jortin is willing to allow of other miracles besides 
those recorded in Holy Writ, and why not of other 
prophecies ? It is granting too much to Satan to sup- 
pose him, as divers of the learned have done, the in- 
spirer of the ancient oracles. Wiser, I esteem it, to 
give chance the credit of the successful ones. What is 
said here of Louis Philippe was verified in some of its 
minute particulars within a few months' time. Enough 
to have made the fortune of Delphi or Hammon, and 



Agin holdin' o' slaves, though he knows 
it 's the corner 

Our libbaty rests on, the mis'able scorner ! 

In short, he would wholly upset with his 
ravages 

All thet keeps us above the brute critters 
an' savages, 

An' pitch into all kinds o' briles an' con- 
fusions 

The holl of our civerlized, free institu- 
tions ; 

He writes fer thet ruther unsafe print, the 
Courier, 

An' likely ez not hez a squintin' to Foorier; 

I '11 be , thet is, I mean I '11 be blest, 

Ef I hark to a word frum so noted a pest; 

I sha'n't talk with Mm, my religion 's too 
fervent. 

Good mornin', my friends, I 'm your most 
humble servant. 

[Into the question whether the ability to ex- 
press ourselves in articulate language has been 
productive of more good or evil, I shall not 
here enter at large. The two faculties of speech 
and of speech-making are wholly diverse in 
their natures. By the first we make ourselves 
intelligible, by the last unintelligible, to our 
fellows. It has not seldom occurred to me (not- 
ing how in our national legislature everything 
runs to talk, as lettuces, if the season or the 
soil be unpropitious, shoot up lankly to seed, 
instead of forming handsome heads) that Babel 
was the first Congress, the earliest mill erected 
for the manufacture of gabble. In these days, 
what with Town Meetings, School Committees, 
Boards (lumber) of one kind and another, Con- 
gresses, Parliaments, Diets, Indian Councils, 
Palavers, and the like^ there is scarce a village 
which has not its factories of this description 
driven by milk-and-water power. I cannot 
conceive the confusion of tongues to have been 
the curse of Babel, since I esteem my ignorance 
of other languages as a kind of Martello-tower, 
in which I am safe from the furious bombard- 
ments of foreign garrulity. For this reason I 
have ever preferred the study of the dead lan- 
guages, those primitive formations being Ara- 
rats upon whose silent peaks I sit secure and 
watch this new deluge without fear, though it 
rain figures (simulacra, semblances) of speech 

no thanks to Beelzebub neither ! That of Seneca in 
Medea will suit here : — 

" Rapida fortuna ac levis 
Praecepsque regno eripuit, exsilio dedit." 

Let us allow, even to richly deserved misfortune, our 
commiseration, and be not over-hasty meanwhile in our 
censure of the French people, left for the first time to 
govern themselves, remembering that wise sentence of 
iEschylus, — 

"A7ras Se rpa^vs ootis w veov Kparfj. — H. W. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



197 



forty days and nights together, as it not uncom- 
monly happens. Thus is my coat, as it were, 
without buttons by which any but a vernacular 
wild bore can seize me. Is it not possible that 
the Shakers may intend to convey a quiet re- 
proof and hint, in fastening their outer gar- 
ments with hooks and eyes ? 

This reflection concerning Babel, which I 
find in no Commentary, was first thrown upon 
my mind when an excellent deacon of my con- 
gregation (being infected with the Second Ad- 
vent delusion) assured me that he had received 
a first instalment of the gift of tongues as a 
small earnest of larger possessions in the like 
kind to follow. For, of a truth, I could not 
reconcile it with my ideas of the Divine justice 
and mercy that the single wall which protected 
people of other languages from the incursions 
of this otherwise well-meaning propagandist 
should be broken down. 

In reading Congressional debates, I have 
fancied, that, after the subsidence of those 
painful buzzings in the brain which result from 
such exercises, I detected a slender residuum of 
valuable information. I made the discovery 
that nothing takes longer in the saying than 
anything else, for as ex nihilo nihil jit, so from 
one polypus nothing any number of similar ones 
may be produced. I would recommend to the 
attention of viva voce debaters and controver- 
sialists the admirable example of the monk 
Copres, who, in the fourth century, stood for 
half an hour in the midst of a great fire, and 
thereby silenced a Maniehsean antagonist who 
had less of the salamander in him. As for 
those who quarrel in print, I have no concern 
with them here, since the eyelids are a divinely 
granted shield against all such. Moreover, I 
have observed in many modern books that the 
printed portion is becoming gradually smaller, 
and the number of blank or fly-leaves (as they 
are called) greater. Should this fortunate ten- 
dency of literature continue, books will grow 
more valuable from year to year, and the whole 
Serbonian bog yield to the advances of firm 
arable land. 

The sagacious Lacedaemonians, hearing that 
Tesephone had bragged that he could talk all 
day long on any given subject, made no more 
ado, but forthwith banished him, whereby they 
supplied him a topic and at the same time took 
care that his experiment upon it should be tried 
out of earshot. 

I have wondered, in the Representatives' 
Chamber of our own Commonwealth, to mark 
how little impression seemed to be produced by 
that emblematic fish suspended over the heads 
of the members. Our wiser ancestors, no doubt, 
hung it there as being the animal which the 
Pythagoreans reverenced for its silence, and 
which certainly in that particular does not so 
well merit the epithet cold-blooded, by which 
naturalists distinguish it, as certain bipeds, af- 
flicted with ditch-water on the brain, who take 
occasion to tap themselves in Faneuil Halls, 
meeting-houses, and other places of public re- 
sort. — H. W.] 



No. V 
THE DEBATE IN THE SENNIT 

SOT TO A NUSRY RHYME 

[Tele incident which gave rise to the debate 
satirized in the following verses was the unsuc- 
cessful attempt of Drayton and Sayres to give 
freedom to seventy men and women, fellow- 
beings and fellow-Christians. Had Tripoli, in- 
stead of Washington, been the scene of this 
undertaking, the unhappy leaders in it would 
have been as secure of the theoretic as they now 
are of the practical part of martyrdom. I ques- 
tion whether the Dey of Tripoli is blessed with 
a District Attorney so benighted as ours at the 
seat of government. Very fitly is he named 
Key, who would allow himself to be made the 
instrument of locking the door of hope against 
sufferers in such a cause. Not all the waters of 
the ocean can cleanse the vile smutch of the 
jailer's fingers from off that little Key. Ahenea 
clavis, a brazen Key indeed ! 

Mr. Calhoun, who is made the chief speaker 
in this burlesque, seems to think that the light 
of the nineteenth century is to be put out as 
soon as he tinkles his little cow-bell curfew. 
Whenever slavery is touched, he sets up his 
scarecrow of dissolving the Union. This may 
do for the North, but I should conjecture that 
something more than a pumpkin-lantern is re- 
quired to scare manifest and irretrievable Des- 
tiny out of Jier path. Mr. Calhoun cannot let 
go the apron-string of the Past. The Past is a 
good nurse, but we must be weaned from her 
sooner or later, even though, like Plotinus, we 
should run home from school to ask the breast, 
after we are tolerably well-grown youths. It 
will not do for us to hide our faces in her lap, 
whenever the strange Future holds out her 
arms and asks us to come to her. 

But we are all alike. We have all heard it 
said, often enough, that little boys must not 
play with fire ; and yet, if the matches be taken 
away from us, and put out of reach upon the 
shelf, we must needs gets into our little corner, 
and scowl and stamp and threaten the dire re- 
venge of going to bed without our supper. The 
world shall stop till we get our dangerous play- 
thing again. Dame Earth, meanwhile, who has 
more than enough household matters to mind, 
goes bustling hither and thither as a hiss or a 
sputter tells her that this or that kettle of hers 
is boiling over, and before bedtime we are glad 
to eat our porridge cold, and gulp down our dig- 
nity along with it. 

Mr. Calhoun has somehow acquired the name 
of a great statesman, and, if it be great states- 
manship to put lance in rest and run a tilt at 
the Spirit of the Age with the certainty of 
being next moment hurled neck and heels into 
the dust amid universal laughter, he deserves 
the title. He is the Sir Kay of our modern 
chivalry. He should remember the old Scan- 
dinavian mythus. Thor was the strongest of 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



gods, but he could not wrestle with Time, nor 
so much as lift up a fold of the great snake 
which hound the universe together ; and when 
he smote the Earth, though with his terrible 
mallet, it was but as if a leaf had fallen. Yet 
all the while it seemed to Thor that he had only 
been wrestling with an old woman, striving to 
lift a cat, and striking a stupid giant on the 
head. 

And in old times, doubtless, the giants were 
stupid, and there was no better sport for the Sir 
Launcelots and Sir Gawains than to go about 
cutting off their great blundering heads with 
enchanted swords. But things have wonder- 
fully changed. It is the giants, nowadays, that 
have the science and the intelligence, while the 
chivalrous Don Quixotes of Conservatism still 
cumber themselves with the clumsy armor of 
a bygone age. On whirls the restless globe 
through unsounded time, with its cities and its 
silences, its births and funerals, half light, half 
shade, but never wholly dark, and sure to swing 
round into the happy morning at last. With an 
involuntary smile, one sees Mr. Calhoun letting 
slip his pack-thread cable with a crooked pin at 
the end of it to anchor South Carolina upon the 
bank and shoal of the Past. — H. W.] 



TO MR. BUCKENAM 

MR. Editer, As i wuz kinder prunin 
round in a little nussry sot out a year or 2 
a go, the Dbait in the sennit cum inter my 
mine An so i took & Sot it to wut I call a 
nussry rime. I hev made sum onnable 
Gentlemun speak thut dident speak in a 
Kind uv Poetikul lie sense the seeson is 
dreffle backerd up This way 
ewers as ushul 

HOSEA BIGLOW. 

"Here we stan' on the Constitution, by 
thunder ! 
It 's a fact o' wich ther 's bushils o' 
proofs ; 
Fer how could we trample on 't so, I 
wonder, 
Ef 't worn't thet it 's oilers under our 
hoofs ? " 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he ; 
" Human rights haint no more 
Bight to come on this floor, 
No more 'n the man in the moon," sez 
he. 

" The North haint no kind o' bisness with 
nothin', 
An' you 've no idee how much bother it 
saves ; 



We aint none riled by their frettin' an' 
frothin', 
We 're used to layin' the string on our 
slaves," 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; — 
Sez Mister Foote, 
" I should like to shoot 
The holl gang, by the gret horn 
spoon ! " sez he. 

"Freedom's Keystone is Slavery, thet 
ther 's no doubt on, 
It 's sutthin' thet 's — wha' d' ye call it ? 
— divine, — 
An' the slaves thet we oilers make the 
most out on 
Air them north o' Mason an' Dixon's 
line," 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; — 
" Fer all that," sez Mangum, 
" 'T would be better to hang 'em 
An' so git red on 'em soon," sez he. 

" The mass ough' to labor an' we lay on 



Thet 's the reason I want to spread Free- 
dom's aree; 
It puts all the cunninest on us in office, 
An' reelises our Maker's orig'nal idee," 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; — 
"Thet's ez plain," sez Cass, 
" Ez thet some one 's an ass, 
It 's ez clear ez the sun is at noon," sez 
he. 

"Now don't go to say I'm the friend of 
oppression, 
But keep all your spare breath fer coolin' 
your broth, 
Fer I oilers hev strove (at least thet 's my 
impression) 
To make cussed free with the rights o' 
the North," 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; — 
" Yes," sez Davis o' Miss., 
" The perfection o' bliss 
Is in skinnin' thet same old coon," sez 
he. 

" Slavery 's a thing thet depends on com- 
plexion, 
It 's God's law thet fetters on black skins 
don't chafe; 
Ef brains wuz to settle it (horrid reflection ! 
Wich of our onnable body 'd be safe ? " 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



199 



Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; — 

Sez Mister Hannegan, 

Afore he began agin, 
" Thet exception is quite oppertoon," 

sez he. 

" Gen'nle Cass, Sir, you need n't be twitchin' 
your collar, 
Your merit's quite clear by the dut on 
your knees, 
At the North we don't make no distinctions 
o' color; 
You can all take a lick at our shoes wen 
you please," 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; — 
Sez Mister Jarnagin, 
" They wun't hev to larn agin, 
They all on 'em know the old toon," 
sez he. 

" The slavery question aint no ways bewil- 
derin', 
North an' South hev one int'rest, it's plain 
to a glance; 
No'thern men, like us patriarchs, don't sell 
their childrin, 
But they du sell themselves, ef they git a 
good chance," 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; — 
Sez Atherton here, 
" This is gittin' severe, 
I wish I could dive like a loon," sez he. 

" It '11 break up the Union, this talk about 
freedom, 
An' your fact' ry gals (soon ez we split) 
'11 make head, 
An' gittin' some Miss chief or other to lead 
'em, 
'11 go to work raisin' permiscoous Ned," 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; — 
" Yes, the North," sez Colquitt, 
"Ef we Southeners all quit, 
Would go down like a busted balloon," 
sez he. 

"Jest look wut is doin', wut annyky's 
brewin' 
In the beautiful clime o' the olive an' 
vine, 
All the wise aristoxy 's atumblin' to ruin, 
An' the sankylots drorin' an' drinkin' 
their wine," 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; — 
" Yes," sez Johnson, " in France 



They 're beginnin' to dance 
Beelzebub's own rigadoon," sez he. 

" The South 's safe enough, it don't feel a 
mite skeery, 
Our slaves in their darkness an' dut air 
tu blest 
Not to welcome with proud hallylugers the 
ery 
Wen our eagle kicks yourn from the nay- 
tional nest," 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; — 
" Oh," sez Westcott o' Florida, 
" Wut treason is horrider 
Than our priv'leges tryin' to proon ? " 
sez he. 

" It 's 'coz they 're so happy, thet, wen crazy 
sarpints 
Stick their nose in our bizness, we git so 
darned riled; 
We think it 's our dooty to give pooty sharp 
hints, 
Thet the last crumb of Edin on airth 
sha'n't be spiled," 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; — 
" Ah," sez Dixon H. Lewis, 
" It perfectly true is 
Thet slavery 's airth's grettest boon," 
sez he. 

[It was said of old time, that riches have 
wings ; and, though this be not applicable in a 
literal strictness to the wealth of our patriarchal 
brethren of the South, yet it is clear that their 
possessions have legs, and an unaccountable 
propensity for using them in a northerly direc- 
tion. I marvel that the grand jury of Washing- 
ton did not find a true bill against the North 
Star for aiding and abetting Drayton and Sayres. 
It would have been quite of a piece with the 
intelligence displayed by the South on other 
questions connected with slavery. I think that 
no ship of state was ever freighted with a more 
veritable Jonah than this same domestic institu- 
tion of ours. Mephistopheles himself could not 
feign so bitterly, so satirically sad a sight as 
this of three millions of human beings crushed 
beyond help or hope by this one mighty argu- 
ment, — Our fathers knew no better ! Neverthe- 
less, it is the unavoidable destiny of Jonahs to 
be cast overboard sooner or later. Or shall we 
try the experiment of hiding our Jonah in a safe 
place, that none may lay hands on him to make 
jetsam of him ? Let us, then, with equal fore- 
thought and wisdom, lash ourselves to the an- 
chor, and await, in pious confidence, the cer- 
tain result. Perhaps our suspicious passenger 
is no Jonah after all, being black. For it is well 
known that a superintending Providence made 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



a kind of sandwich of Ham and his descendants, 
to be devoured by the Caucasian race. 

In God's name, let all, who hear nearer and 
nearer the hungry moan of the storm and the 
growl of the breakers, speak out ! But, alas ! 
we have no right to interfere. If a man pluck 
an apple of mine, he shall be in danger of the 
justice ; but if he steal my brother, I must be 
silent. Who says this ? Our Constitution, con- 
secrated by the callous consuetude of sixty 
years, and grasped in triumphant argument by 
the left hand of him whose right hand clutches 
the clotted slave-whip. Justice, venerable with 
the undethronable majesty of countless aeons, 
says, — Speak ! The Past, wise with the sorrows 
and desolations of ages, from amid her shattered 
fanes and wolf - housing palaces, echoes, — 
Speak ! Nature, through her thousand trum- 
pets of freedom, her stars, her sunrises, her seas, 
her winds, her cataracts, her mountains blue 
with cloudy pines, blows jubilant encourage- 
ment, and cries, — Speak! From the soul's 
trembling abysses the still, small voice not 
vaguely murmurs, — Speak ! But, alas ! the 
Constitution and the Honorable Mr. Bagowind, 
M. C, say — Be dumb ! 

It occurs to me to suggest, as a topic of in- 
quiry in this connection, whether, on that mo- 
mentous occasion when the goats and the sheep 
shall be parted, the Constitution and the Hon- 
orable Mr. Bagowind, M. C, will be expected 
to take their places on the left as our hircine 
vicars, 

Quid sum miser tunc dicturus f 
Quern patronum rogaturus f 

There is a point where toleration sinks into 
sheer baseness and poltroonery. The toleration 
of the worst leads us to look on what is barely 
better as good enough, and to worship what is 
only moderately good. Woe to that man, or 
that nation, to whom mediocrity has become an 
ideal ! 

Has our experiment of self-government suc- 
ceeded, if it barely manage to rub and go ? 
Here, now, is a piece of barbarism which Christ 
and the nineteenth century say shall cease, and 
which Messrs. Smith, Brown, and others say 
shall not cease. I would by no means deny the 
eminent respectability of these gentlemen, but 
I confess, that, in such a wrestling-match, I 
cannot help having my fears for them. 

Discite justitiam, moniti, et non temnere divos. 
H. W.] 

No. VI 

THE PIOUS EDITOR'S CREED 

[At the special instance of Mr. Biglow, I pre- 
face the following satire with an extract from 
a sermon preached during the past summer, 
from Ezekiel xxxiv. 2 : " Son of man, prophesy 
against the shepherds of Israel." Since the 
Sabbath on which this discourse was delivered, 



the editor of the " Jaalam Independent Blun- 
derbuss " has unaccountably absented himself 
from our house of worship. 

" I know of no so responsible position as that 
of the public journalist. The editor of our day 
bears the same relation to his time that the 
clerk bore to the age before the invention of 
printing. Indeed, the position which he holds 
is that which the clergyman should hold even 
now. But the clergyman chooses to walk off to 
the extreme edge of the world, and to throw 
such seed as he has clear over into that dark- 
ness which he calls the Next Life. As if next 
did not mean nearest, and as if any life were 
nearer than that immediately present one which 
boils and eddies all around him at the caucus, 
the ratification meeting, and the polls ! Who 
taught him to exhort men to prepare for eter- 
nity, as for some future era of which the pres- 
ent forms no integral part ? The furrow which 
Time is even now turning runs through the 
Everlasting, and in that must he plant, or no- 
where. Yet he would fain believe and teach 
that we are going to have more of eternity than 
we have now. This going of his is like that of 
the auctioneer, on which gone follows before we 
have made up our minds to bid, — in which 
manner, not three months back, I lost an excel- 
lent copy of Chappelow on Job. So it has come 
to pass that the preacher, instead of being 
a living force, has faded into an emblematic 
figure at christenings, weddings, and funerals. 
Or, if he exercise any other function, it is as 
keeper and feeder of certain theologic dogmas, 
which, when occasion offers, he unkennels with 
a staboy ! ' to bark and bite as 't is their nature 
to,' whence that reproach of odium theologicum 
has arisen. 

"Meanwhile, see what a pulpit the editor 
mounts daily, sometimes with a congregation of 
fifty thousand within reach of his voice, and 
never so much as a nodder, even, among them ! 
And from what a Bible can he choose his text, 

— a Bible which needs no translation, and which 
no priestcraft can shut and clasp from the laity, 

— the open volume of the world, upon which, 
with a pen of sunshine or destroying fire, the in- 
spired Present is even now writing the annals of 
God ! Methinks the editor who should under- 
stand his calling, and be equal thereto, would 
truly deserve that title of noi/Mrip \auiv, which 
Homer bestows upon princes. He would be the 
Moses of our nineteenth century ; and whereas 
the old Sinai, silent now, is but a common 
mountain stared at by the elegant tourist and 
crawled over by the hammering geologist, he 
must find his tables of the new law here among 
factories and cities in this Wilderness of Sin 
(Numbers xxxiii. 12) called Progress of Civiliza- 
tion, and be the captain of our Exodus into the 
Canaan of a truer social order. 

" Nevertheless, our editor will not come so 
far within even the shadow of Sinai as Mahomet 
did, but chooses rather to construe Moses by 
Joe Smith. He takes up the crook, not that 
the sheep may be fed, but that he may never 
want a warm woollen suit and a joint of mutton. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



Immemor, 0, fidei, pecorumque oblite tuorum ! 

For which reason I would derive the name ed- 
itor not so much from edo, to publish, as from 
edo, to eat, that being the peculiar profession to 
which he esteems himself called. He blows up 
the flames of political discord for no other occa- 
sion than that he may thereby handily boil his 
own pot. I believe there are two thousand of 
these mutton-loving shepherds in the United 
States, and of these, how many have even the 
dimmest perception of their immense power, 
and the duties consequent thereon ? Here and 
there, haply, one. Nine hundred and ninety- 
nine labor to impress upon the people the great 
principles of Tweedledum, and other nine hun- 
dred and ninety-nine preach with equal earnest- 
ness the gospel according to Tweedledee." — 
H. W.] 

I du believe in Freedom's cause, 

Ez fur away ez Payris is ; 
I love to see her stick her claws 

In them infarnal Phayrisees ; 
It 's wal enough agin a king 

To dror resolves an' triggers, — 
But libbaty 's a kind o' thing 

Thet don't agree with niggers. 

I du believe the people want 

A tax on teas an' coffees, 
Thet nothin' aint extravygunt, — 

Purvidin' I 'm in office ; 
Fer I hev loved my country sence 

My eye-teeth filled their sockets, 
An' Uncle Sam I reverence, 

Partic'larly his pockets. 

I du believe in any plan 

O' levyin' the texes, 
Ez long ez, like a lumberman, 

I git jest wut I axes ; 
I go free-trade thru thick an' thin, 

Because it kind o' rouses 
The folks to vote, — an' keeps us in 

Our quiet custom-houses. 

I du believe it 's wise an' good 

To sen' out f urrin missions, 
Thet is, on sarfcin understood 

An' orthydox conditions ; — 
I mean nine thousan' dolls, per ami., 

Nine thousan' more fer outfit, 
An' me to recommend a man 

The place 'ould jest about fit. 

I du believe in special ways 
O' prayin' an' convartin' ; 
The bread comes back in many days, 



An' buttered, tu, fer sartin ; 
I mean in preyin' till one busts 

On wut the party chooses, 
An' in convartin' public trusts 

To very privit uses. 

I du believe hard coin the stuff 

Fer 'lectioneers to spout on; 
The people's oilers soft enough 

To make hard money out on; 
Dear Uncle Sam pervides fer his, 

An' gives a good-sized junk to all, — ■ 
I don't care how hard money is, 

Ez long ez mine 's paid punctooal. 

I du believe with all my soul 

In the gret Press's freedom, 
To pint the people to the goal 

An' in the traces lead 'em; 
Palsied the arm thet forges yokes 

At my fat contracts squintin', 
An' withered be the nose thet pokes 

Inter the gov'ment printin' ! 

I du believe thet I should give 

Wut 's his'n unto Caesar, 
Fer it 's by him I move an' live, 

Frum him my bread an' cheese air; 
I du believe thet all o' me 

Doth bear his superscription, — 
Will, conscience, honor, honesty, 

An' things o' thet description. 

I du believe in prayer an' praise 

To him thet hez the grantin' 
O' jobs, — in every thin' thet pays, 

But most of all in Cantin' ; 
This doth my cup with marcies fill, 

This lays all thought o' sin to rest, — 
I don't believe in princerple, 

But oh, I du in interest. 

I du believe in bein' this 

Or thet, ez it may happen 
One way or 't other hendiest is 

To ketch the people nappin' ; 
It aint by princerples nor men 

My preudunt course is steadied, — 
I scent wich pays the best, an' then 

Go into it baldheaded. 

I du believe thet holdin' slaves 
Comes nat'ral to a Presidunt, 

Let 'lone the rowdedow it saves 
To hev a wal-broke precedunt; 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



Fer any office, small or gret, 

I could n't ax with no face, 
'uthout I 'd ben, thru dry an' wet, 

Th' unrizzest kind o' doughface. 

I du believe wutever trash 

'11 keep the people in blindness, — 
Thet we the Mexicuns can thrash 

Right inter brotherly kindness, 
Thet bombshells, grape, an' powder V ball 

Air good-will's strongest magnets, 
Thet peace, to make it stick at all, 

Must be druv in with bagnets. 

In short, I firmly du believe 

In Humbug generally, 
Fer it 's a thing thet I perceive 

To hev a solid vally; 
This heth my faithful shepherd ben, 

In pasturs sweet heth led me, 
An' this '11 keep the people green 

To feed ez they hev fed me. 

[I subjoin here another passage from my be- 
fore-mentioned discourse. 

"Wonderful, to him that has eyes to see it 
rightly, is the newspaper. To me, for example, 
sitting on the critical front bench of the pit, in 
my study here in Jaalam, the advent of my 
weekly journal is as that of a strolling theatre, 
or rather of a puppet-show, on whose stage, nar- 
row as it is, the tragedy, comedy, and farce 
of life are played in little. Behold the whole 
huge earth sent to me hebdomadally in a brown- 
paper wrapper ! 

" Hither, to my obscure corner, by wind or 
steam, on horseback or dromedary-back, in the 
pouch of the Indian runner, or choking over 
the magnetic wires, troop all the famous per- 
formers from the four quarters of the globe. 
Looked at from a point of criticism, tiny pup- 
pets they seem all, as the editor sets up his 
booth upon my desk and officiates as showman. 
Now I can truly see how little and transitory is 
life. The earth appears almost as a drop of 
vinegar, on which the solar microscope of the 
imagination must be brought to bear in order 
to make out anything distinctly. That animal- 
cule there, in the pea-jacket, is Louis Philippe, 
just landed on the coast of England. That 
other, in the gray surtout and cocked hat, is 
Napoleon Bonaparte Smith, assuring France 
that she need apprehend no interference from 
him in the present alarming juncture. At that 
spot, where you seem to see a speck of some- 
thing in motion, is an immense mass-meeting. 
Look sharper, and you will see a mite brandish- 
ing his mandibles in an excited manner. That 
is the great Mr. Soandso, defining his position 
amid tumultuous and irrepressible cheers. 
That infinitesimal creature, upon whom some 



score of others, as minute as he, are gazing in 
open-mouthed admiration, is a famous philoso- 
pher, expounding to a select audience their 
capacity for the Infinite. That scarce discerni- 
ble pufflet of smoke and dust is a revolution. 
That speck there is a reformer, just arranging 
the lever with which he is to move the world. 
And lo, there creeps forward the shadow of a 
skeleton that blows one breath between its 
grinning teeth, and all our distinguished actors 
are whisked off the slippery stage into the dark 
Beyond. 

"Yes, the little show-box has its solemner 
suggestions. Now and then we catch a glimpse 
of a grim old man, who lays down a scythe and 
hour-glass in the corner while he shifts the 
scenes. There, too, in the dim background, a 
weird shape is ever delving. Sometimes he 
leans upon his mattock, and gazes, as a coach 
whirls by, bearing the newly married on their 
wedding jaunt, or glances carelessly at a babe 
brought home from christening. Suddenly (for 
the scene grows larger and larger as we look) a 
bony hand snatches back a performer in the 
midst of his part, and him, whom yesterday 
two infinities (past and future) would not suf- 
fice, a handful of dust is enough to cover and 
silence forever. Nay, we see the same fleshless 
fingers opening to clutch the showman liimself , 
and guess, not without a shudder, that they are 
lying in wait for spectator also. 

" Think of it : for three dollars a year I buy 
a season-ticket to this great Globe Theatre, for 
which God would write the dramas (only that 
we like farces, spectacles, and the tragedies of 
Apollyon better), whose scene-shifter is Time, 
and whose curtain is rung down by Death. 

" Such, thoughts will occur to me sometimes 
as I am tearing off the wrapper of my news- 
paper. Then suddenly that otherwise too often 
vacant sheet becomes invested for me with a 
strange kind of awe. Look ! deaths and mar- 
riages, notices of inventions, discoveries, and 
books, lists of promotions, of killed, wounded, 
and missing, news of fires, accidents, of sudden 
wealth and as sudden poverty ; — I hold in my 
hand the ends of myriad invisible electric con- 
ductors, along which tremble the joys, sorrows, 
wrongs, triumphs, hopes, and despairs of as 
many men and women everywhere. So that 
upon that mood of mind which seems to isolate 
me from mankind as a spectator of their puppet- 
pranks, another supervenes, in which I feel that 
I, too, unknown and unheard of, am yet of some 
import to my fellows. For, through my news- 
paper here, do not families take pains to send 
me, an entire stranger, news of a death among 
them ? Are not here two who would have me 
know of their marriage ? And, strangest of all, 
is not this singular person anxious to have me 
informed that he has received a fresh supply of 
Dimitry Bruisgins ? But to none of us does the 
Present continue miraculous (even if for a mo- 
ment discerned as such). We glance carelessly 
at the sunrise, and get used to Orion and the 
Pleiades. The wonder wears off, and to-morrow 
this sheet, (Acts x. 11, 12,) in which a vision was 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



203 



let down to me from Heaven, shall be the 
wrappage to a bar of soap or the platter for a 
"beggar's broken victuals." — H. W.] 



No. VII 
A LETTER 

FROM A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESI- 
DENCY IN ANSWER TO SUTTIN QUES- 
TIONS PROPOSED BY MR. HOSEA BIG- 
LOW, INCLOSED IN A NOTE FROM MR. 
BIGLOW TO S. H. GAY, ESQ., EDITOR 
OF THE NATIONAL ANTI - SLAVERY 
STANDARD 

[Curiosity may be said to be the quality 
which preeminently distinguishes and segregates 
man from the lower animals. As we trace the 
scale of animated nature downward, we find 
this faculty (as it may truly be called) of the 
mind diminished in the savage, and wellnigh 
extinct in the brute. The first object which 
civilized man proposes to himself I take to be 
the finding out whatsoever he can concerning his 
neighbors. Nihil humanum a me alienum %>uto ; 
I am curious about even John Smith. The de- 
sire next in strength to this (an opposite pole, in- 
deed, of the same magnet) is that of commu- 
nicating the unintelligence we have carefully 
picked up. 

Men in general may be divided into the in- 
quisitive and the communicative. To the first 
class belong Peeping Toms, eaves-droppers, 
navel-contemplating Brahmins, metaphysicians, 
travellers, Empedocleses, spies, the various so- 
cieties for promoting Rhinothism, Columbuses, 
Yankees, discoverers, and men of science, who 
present themselves to the mind as so many 
marks of interrogation wandering up and down 
the world, or sitting in studies and laboratories. 
The second class I should again subdivide into 
four. In the first subdivision I would rank 
those who have an itch to tell us about them- 
selves, — as keepers of diaries, insignificant per- 
sons generally, Montaignes, Horace Walpoles, 
autobiographers, poets. The second includes 
those who are anxious to impart information 
concerning other people, — as historians, bar- 
bers, and such. To the third belong those who 
labor to give vr, intelligence about nothing at 
all, — as novelists, political orators, the large 
majority of authors, preachers, lecturers, and 
the like. In the fourth come those who are 
communicative from motives of public benevo- 
lence, — as finders of mares'-nests and bringers 
of ill news. Each of us two-legged fowls without 
feathers embraces all these subdivisions in him- 
self to a greater or less degree, for none of us so 
much as lays an egg, or incubates a chalk one, 
but straightway the whole barnyard shall know 
it by our cackle or our cluck. Omnibus hoc 
vitium est. There are different grades in all 



these classes. One will turn his telescope toward 
a back-yard, another toward Uranus ; one will 
tell you that he dined with Smith, another that 
he supped with Plato. In one particular, all 
men may be considered as belonging to the 
first grand division, inasmuch as they all seem 
equally desirous of discovering the mote in 
their neighbor's eye. 

To one or another of these species every human 
being may safely be referred. I think it beyond 
a peradventure that Jonah prosecuted some in- 
quiries into the digestive apparatus of whales, 
and that Noah sealed up a letter in an empty 
bottle, that news in regard to him might not be 
wanting in case of the worst. They had else 
been super or subter human. I conceive, also, 
that, as there are certain persons who contin- 
ually peep and pry at the keyhole of that mys- 
terious door through which, sooner or later, we 
all make our exits, so there are doubtless ghosts 
fidgeting and fretting on the other side of it, 
because they have no means of conveying back 
to this world the scraps of news they have picked 
up in that. For there is an answer ready some- 
where to every question, the great law of give 
and take runs though all nature, and if we see a 
hook, we may be sure that an eye is waiting for 
it. I read in every face I meet a standing ad- 
vertisement of information wanted in regard to 
A. B., or that the friends of C. D. can hear 
something to his disadvantage by application to 
such a one. 

It was to gratify the two great passions of 
asking and answering that epistolary correspon- 
dence was first invented. Letters (for by this 
usurped title epistles are now commonly known) 
are of several kinds. First, there are those 
which are not letters at all — as letters-patent, 
letters dimissory, letters enclosing bills, letters 
of administration, Pliny's letters, letters of di- 
plomacy, of Cato, of Mentor, of Lords Lyttel- 
ton, Chesterfield, and Orrery, of Jacob Behmen, 
Seneca (whom St. Jerome includes in his list of 
sacred writers), letters from abroad, from sons 
in college to their fathers, letters of marque, and 
letters generally, which are in no wise letters of 
mark. Second, are real letters, such as those of 
Gray, Cowper, Walpole, Howell, Lamb, D. Y., 
the first letters from children (printed in stagger- 
ing capitals), Letters from New York, letters of 
credit, and others, interesting for the sake of 
the writer or the thing written. I have read 
also letters from Europe by a gentleman named 
Pinto, containing some curious gossip, and which 
I hope to see collected for the benefit of the 
curious. There are, besides, letters addressed 
to posterity, — as epitaphs, for example, written 
for their own monuments by monarchs, where- 
by we have lately become possessed of the names 
of several great conquerors and kings of kings, 
hitherto unheard of and still unpronounceable, 
but valuable to the student of the entirely dark 
ages. The letter of our Saviour to King Ab- 
garus, that which St. Peter sent to King Pepin 
in the year of grace 755, that of the Virgin to 
the magistrates of Messina, that of the Sanhe- 
drim of Toledo to Annas and Caiaphas, A. D. 35, 



204 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



that of Galeazzo Sforza's spirit to his brother 
Lodovico, that of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus 

to the D 1, and that of this last-mentioned 

active police-magistrate to a nun of Girgenti, I 
would place in a class by themselves, as also the 
letters of candidates, concerning which I shall 
dilate more fully in a note at the end of the 
following poem. At present sat prata biberunt. 
Only, concerning the shape of letters, they are 
all either square or oblong, to which general 
figures circular letters and round-robins also 
conform themselves. — H. W.] 

Deer Sir its gut to be the fashun now 
to rite letters to the candid 8s and i wus 
chose at a publick Meetin in Jaalam to du 
wut wus nessary fur that town, i writ to 
271 ginerals and gut ansers to 209. tha air 
called candid 8s but I don't see nothin can- 
did about 'em. this here 1 wich I send wus 
thought satty's factory. I dunno as it 's 
ushle to print Poscrips, but as all the ansers 
I got hed the saim, I sposed it wus best, 
times has gretly changed. Formaly to 
knock a man into a cocked hat wus to use 
him up, but now it ony gives him a chance 
fur the cheef madgustracy. — H. B. 

Dear Sir, — You wish to know my notions 

On sartin pints thet rile the land ; 
There 's nothin' thet my natur so shuns 

Ez bein' mum or underhand ; 
I 'm a straight-spoken kind o' creetur 

Thet blurts right out wut 's in his head, 
An' ef I 've one pecooler feetur, 

It is a nose thet wunt be led. 

So, to begin at the beginnin' 

Ah' come direcly to the pint, 
I think the country's underpinnin' 

Is some consid'ble out o' jint ; 
I aint agoin' to try your patience 

By tellin' who done this or thet, 
I don't make no insinooations, 

I jest let on I smell a rat. 

Thet is, I mean, it seems to me so, 

But, ef the public think I 'm wrong, 
I wunt deny but wut I be so, — 

An', fact, it don't smell very strong ; 
My mind 's tu fair to lose its balance 

An' say wich party hez most sense ; 
There may be folks o' greater talence 

Thet can't set stiddier on the fence. 

I 'm an eclectic ; ez to choosin' 

'Twixt this an' thet, I 'm plaguy lawth ; 



I leave a side thet looks like losin', 

But (wile there 's doubt) I stick to both ; 

I stan' upon the Constitution, 

Ez preudunt statesmun say, who 've 
planned 

A way to git the most profusion 
O' chances ez to ware they '11 stand. 

Ez fer the war, I go agin it, — 

I mean to say I kind o' du, — 
Thet is, I mean thet, bein' in it, 

The best way wuz to fight it thru ; 
Not but wut abstract war is horrid, 

I sign to thet with all my heart, — 
But civlyzation doos git forrid 

Sometimes upon a powder-cart. 

About thet darned Proviso matter 

I never hed a grain o' doubt, 
Nor I aint one my sense to scatter 

So 'st no one could n't pick it out ; 
My love fer North an' South is equil, 

So I '11 jest answer plump an' frank, 
No matter wut may be the sequil, — 

Yes, Sir, I am agin a Bank. 

Ez to the answerin' o' questions, 

I 'm an off ox at bein' druv, 
Though I aint one thet ary test shuns 

'111 give our folks a helpin' shove ; 
Kind o' permiscoous I go it 

Fer the holl country, an' the ground 
I take, ez nigh ez I can show it, 

Is pooty gen'ally all round. 

I don't appruve o' givin' pledges; 

You 'd ough' to leave a feller free, 
An' not go knockin' out the wedges 

To ketch his fingers in the tree ; 
Pledges air awfle breachy cattle 

Thet preudunt farmers don't turn out, — 
Ez long 'z the people git their rattle, 

Wut is there fer 'm to grout about ? 

Ez to the slaves, there 's no confusion 

In my idees consarnin' them, — 
/ think they air an Institution, 

A sort of — yes, jest so, — ahem: 
Do i" own any ? Of my merit 

On thet pint you yourself may jedge ; 
All is, I never drink no sperit, 

Nor I haint never signed no pledge. 

Ez to my princerples, I glory 
In hevin' nothin' o' the sort; 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



205 



I aint a Wig, I aint a Tory, 

I 'm jest a canderdate, in short; 

Thet 's fair an' square an' parpendicler 
But, ef the Public cares a fig 

To hev me an' thin' in particler, 
Wy, I 'm a kind o' peri- Wig. 

P. S. 

Ez we 're a sort o' privateerin', 

O' course, you know, it 's sheer an' sheer, 
An' there is sutthin' wuth your hearin' 

I'll mention in your privit ear; 
Ef you git me inside the White House, 

Your head with ile I '11 kin' o' 'nint 
By gittin' you inside the Light-house 

Down to the eend o' Jaalam Pint. 

An' ez the North hez took to brustlin' 

At bein' scrouged frum off the roost, 
I '11 tell ye wut '11 save all tusslin' 

An' give our side a harnsome boost, — 
Tell 'em thet on the Slavery question 

I 'm right, although to speak I 'm 
lawth; 
This gives you a safe pint to rest on, 

An' leaves me frontin' South by North. 

[And now of epistles candidatial, which are 
of two kinds, — namely, letters of acceptance, 
and letters definitive of position. Our republic, 
on the eve of an election, may safely enough be 
called a republic of letters. Epistolary compo- 
sition becomes then an epidemic, which seizes 
one candidate after another, not seldom cutting 
short the thread of political life. It has come 
to such a pass, that a party dreads less the at- 
tacks of its opponents than a letter from its can- 
didate. Litera scripta manet, and it will go 
hard if something bad cannot be made of it. 
General Harrison, it is well understood, was 
surrounded, during his candidacy, with the cor- 
don sanitaireoi a vigilance committee. No 
prisoner in Spielberg was ever more cautiously 
deprived of writing materials. The soot was 
scraped carefully from the chimney-places ; 
outposts of expert rifle-shooters rendered it sure 
death for any goose (who came clad in feathers) 
to approach within a certain limited distance of 
North Bend ; and all domestic fowls about the 
premises were reduced to the condition of Pla- 
to's original man. By these precautions the 
General was saved. Parva cpmponere magnis, 
I remember, that, when party-spirit once ran 
high among my people, upon occasion of the 
choice of a new deacon, I, having my prefer- 
ences, yet not caring too openly to express them, 
made use of an innocent fraud to bring about 
that result which I deemed most desirable. 
My stratagem was no other than the throwing a 
copy of the Complete Letter- Writer in the way 



of the candidate whom I wished to defeat. He 
caught the infection, and addressed a short note 
to his constituents, in which the opposite party 
detected so many and so grave improprieties (he 
had modelled it upon the letter of a young lady 
accepting a proposal of marriage), that he not 
only lost his election, but, falling under a suspi- 
cion of Sabellianism and I know not what (the 
widow Endive assured me that he was a Parali- 
pomenon, to her certain knowledge), was forced 
to leave the town. Thus it is that the letter 
killeth. 

The object which candidates propose to them- 
selves in writing is to convey no meaning at all. 
And here is a quite unsuspected pitfall into 
which they successively plunge headlong. For 
it is precisely in such cryptographies that man- 
kind are prone to seek for and find a wonder- 
ful amount and variety of significance. Omne 
ignotum pro mirifico. How do we admire at 
the antique world striving to crack those orac- 
ular nuts from Delphi, Hammon, and else- 
where, in only one of which can I so much as 
surmise that any kernel had ever lodged ; that, 
namely, wherein Apollo confessed that he was 
mortal. One Didymus is, moreover, related to 
have written six thousand books on the single 
subject of grammar, a topic rendered only more 
tenebrific by the labors of his successors, and 
which seems still to possess an attraction for 
authors in proportion as they can make nothing 
of it. A singular loadstone for theologians, 
also, is the Beast in the Apocalypse, whereof, 
in the course of my studies, I have noted two 
hundred and three several interpretations, each 
lethiferal to all the rest. Non nostrum est 
tantas componere lites, yet I have myself ven- 
tured upon a two hundred and fourth, which I 
embodied in a discourse preached on occasion 
of the demise of the late usurper, Napoleon 
Bonaparte, and which quieted, in a large meas- 
ure, the minds of my people. It is true that 
my views on this important point were ardently 
controverted by Mr. Shearjashub Holden, the 
then preceptor of our academy, and in other 
particulars a very deserving and sensible young 
man, though possessing a somewhat limited 
knowledge of the Greek tongue. But his heresy 
struck down no deep root, and, he having been 
lately removed by the hand of Providence, I 
had the satisfaction of reaffirming my cherished 
sentiments in a sermon preached upon the 
Lord's day immediately succeeding his funeral. 
This might seem like taking an unfair advan- 
tage, did I not add that he had made provision 
in his last will (being celibate) for the publica- 
tion of a posthumous tractate in support of his 
own dangerous opinions. 

I know of nothing in our modern times which 
approaches so nearly to the ancient oracle as 
the letter of a Presidential candidate. Now, 
among the Greeks, the eating of beans was 
strictly forbidden to all such as had it in mind 
to consult those expert amphibologists, and this 
same prohibition on the part of Pythagoras to 
his disciples is understood to imply an absti- 
nence from politics, beans having been used as 



206 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



ballots. That other explication, quod videlicet 
sensus eo cibo obtundi existimaret, though sup- 
ported pugnis et calcibus by many of the 
learned, and not wanting the countenance of 
Cicero, is confuted by the larger experience of 
New England. On the whole, I think it safer 
to apply here the rule of interpretation which 
now generally obtains in regard to antique cos- 
mogonies, myths, fables, proverbial expressions, 
and knotty points generally, which is, to find a 
common-sense meaning, and then select what- 
ever can be imagined the most opposite there- 
to. In this way we arrive at the conclusion, 
that the Greeks objected to the questioning of 
candidates. And very properly, if, as I con- 
ceive, the chief point be not to discover what a 
person in that position is, or what he will do, 
but whether he can be elected. Vos exem- 
plaria Grceca nocturna versale manu, versate 
diurna. 

But, since an imitation of the Greeks in this 
particular (the asking of questions being one 
chief privilege of freemen) is hardly to be 
hoped for, and our candidates will answer, 
whether they are questioned or not, I would 
recommend that these ante-electionary dia- 
logues should be carried on by symbols, as 
were the diplomatic correspondences of the 
Scythians and Macrobii, or confined to the 
language of signs, like the famous interview of 
Panurge and Goatsnose. A candidate might 
then convey a suitable reply to all committees 
of inquiry by closing one eye, or by presenting 
them with a phial of Egyptian darkness to be 
speculated upon by their respective constituen- 
cies. These answers would be susceptible of 
whatever retrospective construction the exigen- 
cies of the political campaign might seem to 
demand, and the candidate could take his posi- 
tion on either side of the fence with entire con- 
sistency. Or, if letters must be written, profit- 
able use might be made of the Dighton rock 
hieroglyphic or the cuneiform script, every fresh 
decipherer of which is enabled -to educe a differ- 
ent meaning, whereby a sculptured stone or 
two supplies us, and will probably continue to 
sxxpply posterity, with a very vast and various 
body of authentic history. For even the brief- 
est epistle in the ordinary chirography is . dan- 
gerous. There is scarce any style so compressed 
that superfluous words may not be detected in 
it. A severe critic might curtail that famous 
brevity of Caesar's by two thirds, drawing his 
pen through the supererogatory veni and vidi. 
Perhaps, after all, the surest footing of hope is 
to be found in the rapidly increasing tendency 
to demand less and less of qualification in can- 
didates. Already have statesmanship, experi- 
ence, and the_ possession (nay, the profession, 
even) of principles been rejected as superfluous, 
and may not the patriot reasonably hope that 
the ability to write will follow ? At present, 
there may be death in pot-hooks as well as pots, 
the loop of a letter may suffice for a bow-string, 
and all the dreadful heresies of Antislavery 
may lurk in a flourish. — H. W.] 



A SECOND LETTER FROM 
B. SAWIN, ESQ. 

[In the following epistle, we behold Mr. 
Sawin returning, a miles emeritus, to the bosom 
of his family. Quantum mutatus ! The good 
Father of us all had doubtless intrusted to the 
keeping of this child of his certain facult?js of 
a constructive kind. He had put in him a share 
of that vital force, the nicest economy of every 
minute atom of which is necessary to the per- 
fect development of Humanity. He had given 
him a brain and heart, and so had equipped his 
soul with the two strong wings of knowledge 
and love, whereby it can mount to hang its nest 
under the eaves of heaven. And this child, so 
dowered, he had intrusted to the keeping of his 
vicar, the State. How stands the account of 
that stewardship ? The State, or Society (call 
her by what name you will), had taken no man- 
ner of thought of him till she saw him swept 
out into the street, the pitiful leavings of last 
night's debauch, witji cigar-ends, lemon-par- 
ings, tobacco-quids, slops, vile stenches, and 
the whole loathsome next-morning of the bar- 
room, — an own child of the Almighty God ! I 
remember him as he was brought to be christ- 
ened, a ruddy, rugged babe ; and now there he 
wallows, reeking, seething, — the dead corpse, 
not of a man, but of a soul, — a putrefying 
lump, horrible for the life that is in it. Comes 
the wind of heaven, that good Samaritan, and 
parts the hair upon his forehead, nor is too nice 
to kiss those parched, cracked lips ; the morn- 
ing opens upon him her eyes full of pitying sun- 
shine, the sky yearns down to him, — and there 
he lies fermenting. O sleep ! let me not pro- 
fane thy holy name by calling that stertorous 
unconsciousness a slumber ! By and by comes 
along the State, God's vicar. Does she say, 
" My poor, forlorn foster-child ! Behold here 
a force which I will make dig and plant and 
build for me"? Not so, but, "Here is a re- 
cruit ready-made to my hand, a piece of de- 
stroying energy lying unprofitably idle." So 
she claps an ugly gray suit on him, puts a mus- 
ket in his grasp, and sends him off, with Guber- 
natorial and other godspeeds, to do duty as a 
destroyer. 

I made one of the crowd at the last Mechan- 
ics' Fair, and, with the rest, stood gazing in 
wonder at a perfect machine, with its soul of 
fire, its boiler-heart that sent the hot blood 
pulsing along the iron arteries, and its thews of 
steel. And while I was admiring the adapta- 
tion of means to end, the harmonious involu- 
tions of contrivance, and the never-bewildered 
complexity, I saw a grimed and greasy fellow, 
the imperious engine's lackey and drudge, 
whose sole office was to let fall, at intervals, a , 
drop or two of oil upon a certain joint. Then { 
my soul said within me, See there a piece of 
mechanism to which that other you marvel at is 
but as the rude first effort of a child, — a force 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



207 



■which not merely suffices to set a few wheels in 
motion, hut which can send an impulse all 
through the infinite future, — a contrivance, 
not for turning out pins, or stitching button- 
holes, but for making Hamlets and Lears. And 
yet this thing of iron shall he housed, waited 
on, guarded from rust and dust, and it shall be 
a crime but so much as to scratch it with a pin ; 
while the other, with its fire of God in it, shall 
be buffeted hither and thither, and finally sent 
carefully a thousand miles to be the target for a 
Mexican cannon-ball. Unthrifty Mother State ! 
My heart burned within me for pity and indig- 
nation, and I renewed this covenant with my 
own soul, — In aliis mansuetus ero, at, in blas- 
phemiis contra Christum, non ita. — H. W. 

I spose you wonder ware I be ; I can't tell, 

fer the soul o' me, 
Exacly ware I be myself, — meanin' by 

thet the holl o' me. 
Wen I left hum, I lied two legs, an' they 

worn't bad ones neither, 
(The scaliest trick they ever played wuz 

bringin' on me hither,) 
!Now one on 'em 's I dunno ware; — they 

thought I wuz adyin', 
An' sawed it off because they said 't wuz 

kin' o' mortifyin' ; 
I 'm willin' to believe it wuz, an' yit I don't 

see, nuther, 
Wy one shoud take to feelin' cheap a min- 

nit sooner 'n t' other, 
Sence both wuz equilly to blame; but 

things is ez they be; 
It took on so they took it off, an' thet 's 

enough fer me : 
There 's one good thing, though, to be said 

about my wooden new one, — 
The liquor can't git into it ez 't used to in 

the true one; 
So it saves drink; an' then, besides, a feller 

could n't beg 
A gretter blessin' then to hev one oilers 

sober peg; 
It 's true a chap 's in want o' two fer f ol- 

lerin' a drum, 
But all the march I 'm up to now is jest to 

Kingdom Come. 

I 've lost one eye, but thet 's a loss it 's easy 
to supply 

Out o' the glory thet I 've gut, fer thet is 
all my eye; 

An' one is big enough, I guess, by dili- 
gently usin' it, 

To see all I shall ever git by way o' pay fer 
losin' it; 



Off' cers I notice, who git paid fer all our 

thumps an' kickins, 
Du wal by keepin' single eyes arter the 

fattest pickins ; 
So, ez the eye 's put fairly out, I '11 larn to 

go without it, 
An' not allow myself to be no gret put out 

about it. 
Now, le' me see, thet is n't all ; I used, 'fore 

leavin' Jaalam, 
To count things on my finger-eends, but 

sutthin' seems to ail 'em: 
Ware 's my left hand ? Oh, darn it, yes, 

I recollect wut 's come on 't ; 
I haint no left arm but my right, an' thet 's 

gut jest a thumb on 't; 
It aint so hendy ez it wuz to cal'late a sum 

on 't. 
I 've hed some ribs broke, — six (Ib'lieve), 

— I haint kep' no account on 'em ; 
Wen pensions git to be the talk, I '11 settle 

the amount on 'em. 
An' now I 'm speakin' about ribs, it kin' o' 

brings to mind 
One thet I could n't never break, — the one 

I lef behind; 
Ef you should see her, jest clear out the 

spout o' your invention 
An' pour the longest sweetnin' in about an 

annooal pension, 
An' kin' o' hint (in case, you know, the 

critter should refuse to be 
Consoled) I aint so 'xpensive now to keep 

ez wut I used to be ; 
There 's one arm less, ditto one eye, an' 

then the leg thet 's wooden 
Can be took off an' sot away wenever 

ther 's a puddin'. 

I spose you think I 'm eomin' back ez op- 

perlunt ez thunder, 
With shiploads o' gold images an' varus 

sorts o' plunder; 
Wal, 'fore I vullinteered, I thought this 

country wuz a sort o' 
Canaan, a reg'lar Promised Land flowin' 

with rum an' water, 
Ware propaty growed up like time, without 

no cultivation, 
An' gold wuz dug ez taters be among our 

Yankee nation, 
Ware nateral advantages were pufficly 

amazin', 
Ware every rock there wuz about with pre- 
cious stuns wuz blazin', 



208 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



Ware mill-sites filled the country up ez 

thick ez you could cram 'em, 
An' desput rivers run about a beggin' folks 

to dam 'em; 
Then there were meetinhouses, tu, chockf ul 

o' gold an' silver 
Thet you could take, an' no one could n't 

hand ye in no bill fer; — 
Thet 's wut I thought afore I went, thet 's 

wut them fellers told us 
Thet stayed to hum an' speechified an' to 

the buzzards sold us; 
I thought thet gold-mines could be gut 

cheaper than Chiny asters, 
An' see myself acomin' back like sixty Ja- 
cob Astors; 
But sech idees soon melted down an' did n't 

leave a grease-spot; 
I vow my holl sheer o' the spiles would n't 

come nigh a V spot; 
Although, most anywares we 've ben, you 

need n't break no locks, 
Nor run no kin/ o' risks, to fill your pocket 

-full o' rocks. 
I 'xpect I mentioned in my last some o' the 

nateral feeturs 
O' this all-fiered buggy hole in th' way o' 

awfle creeturs, 
But I fergut to name (new things to speak 

on so abounded) 
How one day you '11 most die o' thust, an' 

'fore the next git drownded. 
The clymit seems to me jest like a teapot 

made o' pewter 
Our Preudence hed, thet would n't pour 

(all she could du) to suit her; 
Fust place the leaves 'ould choke the 

spout, so 's not a drop 'ould dreen 

out, 
Then Prude 'ould tip an' tip an' tip, till the 

holl kit bust clean out, 
The kiver-hinge-pin bein' lost, tea-leaves 

an' tea an' kiver 
'ould all come down kerswosh ! ez though 

the dam bust in a river. 
Jest so 't is here; holl months there aint a 

day o' rainy weather, 
An' jest ez th' officers 'ould be a layin' 

heads together 
Ez t' how they 'd mix their drink at sech a 

milingtary deepot, — 
'T would pour ez though the lid wuz off the 

everlastin' teapot. 
The cons'quence is, thet I shall take, wen 

I 'm allowed to leave here, 



One piece o' propaty along, an' thet 's the 

shakin' fever ; 
It 's reggilar employment, though, an' thet 

aint thought to harm one, 
Nor 't aint so tiresome ez it wuz with 

t'other leg an' arm on; 
An' it 's a consolation, tu, although it doos 

n't pay, 
To hev it said you 're some gret shakes in 

any kin' o' way. 
'T worn't very long, I tell ye wut, I thought 

o' f ortin-makin', — 
One day a reg'lar shiver-de-freeze, an' next 

ez good ez bakin', — 
One day abrilin' in the sand, then smoth'rin' 

in the mashes, — 
Git up all sound, be put to bed a mess o' 

hacks an' smashes. 
But then, thinks I, at any rate there 's glory 

to be hed, — 
Thet 's an investment, arter all, thet may n't 

turn out so bad; 
But somehow, wen we 'd fit an' licked, I 

oilers found the thanks 
Gut kin' o' lodged afore they come ez low 

down ez the ranks; 
The Gin'rals gut the biggest sheer, the 

Cunnles next, an' so on, — 
We never gut a blasted mite o' glory ez I 

know on; 
An' spose we hed, I wonder how you're 

goin' to contrive its 
Division so 's to give a piece to twenty 

thousand privits; 
Ef you should multiply by ten the portion 

o' the brav'st one, 
You would n't git more 'n half enough to 

speak of on a grave-stun; 
We git the licks, — we 're jest the grist 

thet 's put into War's hoppers ; 
Leftenants is the lowest grade thet helps 

pick up the coppers. 
It may suit folks thet go agin a body with 

a soul in 't, 
An' aint contented with a hide without a 

bagnet hole in 't; 
But glory is a kin' o' thing / sha' n't pursue 

no furder, 
Coz thet 's the offc'ers' parquisite, — yourn 's 

on'y jest the murder. 

Wal, arter I gin glory up, thinks I at least 

there 's one 
Thing in the bills we aint hed yit, an' thet 's 

the glorious fun; 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



209 



Ef once we git to Mexico, we fairly may 

persume we 
All day an' night shall revel in the halls o' 

Montezumy. 
I '11 tell ye wut my revels wuz, an' see how 

you would like 'em; 
We never gut inside the hall: the nighest 

ever / come 
Wuz stan'in' sentry in the sun (an', fact, it 

seemed a cent'ry) 
A ketchin' smells o' biled an' roast thet 

come out thru the entry, 
An' hearin' ez I sweltered thru my passes 

an' repasses, 
A rat-tat-too o' knives an' forks, a clinkty- 

clink o' glasses: 
I can't tell off the bill o' fare the Gin'rals 

hed inside ; 
All I know is, thet out o' doors a pair o' 

soles wuz fried, 
An' not a hunderd miles away frum ware 

this child wuz posted, 
A Massachusetts citizen wuz baked an' biled 

an' roasted ; 
The on'y thing like revellin' thet ever come 

to me 
Wuz bein' routed out o' sleep by thet darned 

revelee. 

• They say the quarrel 's settled now; fer my 
part I 've some doubt on % 

't '11 take more fish-skin than folks think to 
take the rile clean out on 't; 

At any rate I 'm so used up I can't do no 
more fightin', 

The on'y chance thet 's left to me is politics 
or writin' ; 

Now, ez the people 's gut to hev a miling- 
tary man, 

An' I aint nothin' else jest now, I 've hit 
upon a plan; 

The can'idatin' line, you know, 'ould suit 
me to a T, 

An' ef I lose, 't wunt hurt my ears to lodge 
another flea; 

So I '11 set up ez can'idate fer any kin' o' 
office, 

(I mean fer any thet includes good easy- 
cheers an' soffies; 

Fer ez tu runnin' fer a place ware work 's 
the time o' day, 

You know thet 's wut I never did, — ex- 
cept the other way;) 

Ef it 's the Presidential cheer fer wich I 'd 
better run, 



Wut two legs any wares about could keep 

up with my one ? 
There aint no kin' o' quality in can'idates, 

it 's said, 
So useful ez a wooden leg, — except a 

wooden head; 
There 's nothin' aint so poppylar — (wy, 

it 's a parfect sin 
To think wut Mexico hez paid fer Santy 

Anny's pin;) — 
Then I haint gut no princerples, an', sence 

I wuz knee-high, 
I never did hev any gret, ez you can tes- 
tify; 
I 'm a decided peace-man, tu, an' go agin 

the war, — 
Fer now the holl on 't 's gone an' past, wut 

is there to go for f 
Ef, wile you 're 'lectioneerin' round, some 

curus chaps should beg 
To know my views o' state affairs, jest 

answer wooden leg ! 
Ef they aint settisfied with thet, an' kin' o 

pry an' doubt 
An' ax fer sutthin' deffynit, jest say one 

EYE PUT OUT ! 

Thet kin' o' talk I guess you '11 find '11 

answer to a charm, 
An' wen you 're druv tu nigh the wall, hoP 

up my niissin' arm; 
Ef they should nose round fer a pledge, put 

on a vartoous look 
An' tell 'em thet 's percisely wut I never 

gin nor — took ! 

Then you can call me " Timbertoes," — 

thet 's wut the people likes; 
Sutthin' combinin' morril truth with 

phrases sech ez strikes; 
Some say the people 's fond o' this, or thet, 

or wut you please, — 
I tell ye wut the people want is jest correct 

idees; 
" Old Timbertoes," you see, 's a creed it 's 

safe to be quite bold on, 
There 's nothin' in 't the other side can any 

ways git hold on; 
It 's a good tangible idee, a sutthin' to em- 
body 
Thet valooable class o' men who look thru 

brandy-toddy; 
It gives a Party Platform, tu, jest level 

with the mind 
Of all right-thinkin', honest folks thet 

mean to go it blind; 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



Then there air other good hooraws to dror 

on ez you need 'em, 
Seeh ez the one-eyed Slarterer, the 

bloody Birdofredum: 
Them 's wut takes hold o' folks thet think, 

ez well ez o' the masses, 
An' makes you sartin o' the aid o' good 

men of all classes. 

There 's one thing I 'm in doubt about; in 

order to be Presidunt, 
It 's absolutely ne'ssary to be a Southern 

residunt; 
The Constitution settles thet, an' also thet 

a feller 
Must own a nigger o' some sort, jet black, 

or brown, or yeller. 
Now I haint no objections agin particklar 

climes, 
Nor agin ownin' anythin' (except the truth 

sometimes), 
But, ez I haint no capital, up there among 

ye, maybe, 
You might raise funds enough fer me to 

buy a low-priced baby, 
An' then to suit the No'thern folks, who 

feel obleeged to say 
They hate an' cus the very thing they vote 

fer every day, 
Say you 're assured I go full but fer Lib- 

baty's diffusion 
An' made the purchis on'y jest to spite the 

Institootion ; — 
But, golly ! there 's the currier's hoss upon 

the pavement pawin' ! 
I '11 be more 'xplicit in my next. 

Yourn, 

BIKDOFKEDUM SAWIN. 

[We have now a tolerably fair chance of esti- 
mating how the balance-sheet stands between 
our returned volunteer and glory. Supposing 
the entries to be set down on both sides of the 
account in fractional parts of one hundred, we 
shall arrive at something like the following re- 
sult : — 

B. Sawin, Esq., in account with (Blank) 
Glory. 

Cr. Dr. 

By loss of one leg . . . 20 To one 675th three 

" do. one arm . . 15 cheers in Fan- 

" do. four fingers 5 euil Hall .... 30 

" do. one eye . . 10 " do. do. on oc- 

" the breaking of six casion of presen- 

ribs 6 tation of sword 

" having served un- to Colonel 

der Colonel Cush- Wright 25 

ing one month . . 44 

100 55 



Brought forward . . . 100 Brought forward ... 55 
To one suit of gray 
clothes (ingeni- 
ously unbecom- 
ing) 15 

" musical enter- 
tainments( drum 
and fife six 
months) 5 

" one dinner after 

return 1 

" chance of pen- 
sion 1 

" privilege of draw- 
ing longbow dur- 
ing rest of nat- 
ural life .... 23 

100 • 100 

E. E. 

It should appear that Mr. Sawin found the 
actual feast curiously the reverse of the bill 
of fare advertised in Faneuil Hall and other 
places. His primary object seems to have been 
the making of his fortune. Qucerenda pecunia 
primum, virtus post nummos. He hoisted sail 
for Eldorado, and shipwrecked on Point Tribu- 
lation. Quid non mortalia pectora cogis, auri 
sacra fames ? The speculation has sometimes 
crossed my mind, in that dreary interval of 
drought which intervenes between quarterly 
stipendiary showers, that Providence, by the 
creation of a money-tree, might have simplified 
wonderfully the sometimes perplexing problem 
of human life. We read of bread-trees, the 
butter for which lies ready-churned in Irish 
bogs. Milk-trees we are assured of in South 
America, and stout Sir John Hawkins testifies 
to water-trees in the Canaries. Boot-trees bear 
abundantly in Lynn and elsewhere ; and I have 
seen, in the entries of the wealthy, hat-trees 
with a fair show of fruit. A family-tree I once 
cultivated myself, and found therefrom but a 
scanty yield, and that quite tasteless and in- 
nutritious. Of trees bearing men we are not 
without examples ; as those in the park of 
Louis the Eleventh of France. Who has for- 
gotten,' moreover, that olive-tree, growing in 
the Athenian's back-garden, with its strange 
uxorious crop, for the general propagation of 
which, as of a new and precious variety, the 
philosopher Diogenes, hitherto uninterested in 
arboriculture, was so zealous ? In the sylva of 
our own Southern States, the females of my 
family have called my attention to the china- 
tree. Not to multiply examples, I will barely 
add to my list the birch-tree, in the smaller 
branches of which has been implanted so 
miraculous a virtue for communicating the 
Latin and Greek languages, and which may 
well, therefore, be classed among the trees pro- 
ducing necessaries of life, — venerabile donum 
fatalis virgos. That money-trees existed in the 
golden age there want not prevalent reasons for 
our believing. For does not the old proverb, 
when it asserts that money does not grow on 
every bush, imply a fortiori that there were 
certain bushes which did produce it ? Again, 
there is another ancient saw to the effect that 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



money is the root of all evil. From which two 
adages it may be safe to infer that the afore- 
said species of tree first degenerated into a 
shrub, then absconded underground, and finally, 
in our iron age, vanished altogether. In favor- 
able exposures it may be conjectured that a, 
specimen or two survived to a great age, as in 
the garden of the Hesperides ; and, indeed, 
what else could that tree in the Sixth iEneid 
have been, with a branch whereof the Trojan 
hero procured admission to a territory, for the 
entering of which money is a surer passport 
than to a certain other more profitable and too 
foreign kingdom ? Whether these speculations 
of mine have any force in them, or whether 
they will not rather, by most readers, be 
deemed impertinent to the matter in hand, is a 
question which I leave to the determination of 
an indulgent posterity. That there were, in 
more primitive and happier times, shops where 
money was sold, — and that, too, on credit and 
at a bargain, — I take to be matter of demon- 
stration. For what but a dealer in this article 
was that iEolus who supplied Ulysses with 
motive-power for his fleet in bags ? what that 
Ericus, King of Sweden, who is said to have 
kept the winds in his cap ? what, in more re- 
cent times, those Lapland Nomas who traded in 
favorable breezes ? All which will appear the 
more clearly when we consider, that, even to 
this day, raising the wind is proverbial for rais- 
ing money, and that brokers and banks were 
invented by the Venetians at a later period. 
_ And now for the improvement of this digres- 
sion. I find a parallel to Mr. Sa win's fortune 
in an adventure of my own. For, shortly after 
I had first broached to myself the before-stated 
natural-historical and archaeological theories, as 
I was passing, hcec negotia penitus mecum revol- 
vens, through one of the obscure suburbs of our 
New England metropolis, my eye was attracted 
by these words upon a signboard, — Cheap 
Cash-Store. Here was at once the confirma- 
tion of my speculations, and the substance of my 
hopes. Here fingered the fragment of a happier 
past, or stretched out the first tremulous organic 
filament of a more fortunate future. Thus 
glowed the distant Mexico to the eyes of Sawin, 
as he looked through the dirty pane of the 
recruiting-office window, or speculated from the 
summit of that mirage-Pisgah which the imps 
of the bottle are so cunning to raise up. Al- 
ready had my Alnaschar-faney (even during 
that first half-believing glance) expended in vari- 
ous useful directions the funds to be obtained 
by pledging the manuscript of a proposed vol- 
ume of discourses. Already did a clock orna- 
ment the tower of the Jaalam meeting-house, a 
gift appropriately, but modestly, commemorated 
in the parish and town records, both, for now 
many years, kept by myself. Already had my 
son Seneca completed his course at the Univer- 
sity .^ Whether, for the moment, we may not be 
considered as actually lording it over those Ba- 
ratarias with the viceroyalty of which Hope in- 
vests us, and whether we are ever so warmly 
housed as in our Spanish castles, would afford 



matter of argument. Enough that I found that 
signboard to be no other than a bait to the trap 
of a decayed grocer. Nevertheless, I bought a 
pound of dates (getting short weight by reason 
of immense flights of harpy flies who pursued 
and lighted upon their prey even in the very 
scales), which purchase I made not only with an 
eye to the little ones at home, but also as a fig- 
urative reproof of that too frequent habit of my 
mind, which, forgetting the due order of chro- 
nology, will often persuade me that the happy 
sceptre of Saturn is stretched over this Astrsea- 
forsaken nineteenth century. 

Having glanced at the ledger of Glory under 
the title Sawin, B., let us extend our investiga- 
tions, and discover if that instructive volume 
does not contain some charges more personally 
interesting to ourselves. I think we should 
be more economical of our resources, did we 
thoroughly appreciate the fact, that, whenever 
Brother Jonathan seems to be thrusting his 
hand into his own pocket, he is, in fact, picking 
ours. I confess that the late muck which the 
country has been running has materially changed 
my views as to the best method of raising 
revenue. If, by means of direct taxation, the 
bills for every extraordinary outlay were brought 
under our immediate eye, so that, like thrifty 
housekeepers, we could see where and how fast 
the money was going, we should be less likely 
to commit extravagances. At present, these 
things are managed in such a hugger-mugger 
way, that we know not what we pay for ; the 
poor man is charged as much as the rich ; and, 
while we are saving and scrimping at the spigot, 
the government is drawing off at the bung. If 
we could know that a part of the money we 
expend for tea and coffee goes to buy powder 
and balls, and that it is Mexican blood which 
makes the clothes on our backs more costly, it 
would set some of us athinking. During the 
present fall, I have often pictured to myself a 
government official entering my study and hand- 
ing me the following bill : — 

Washington, Sept. 30, 1848. 
Rev. Homer Wilbur to WLndz Samuel, 

Dr. 
To his share of work done in Mexico on partner- 
ship account, sundry jobs, as below. 

" killing, maiming and wounding about 5,000 

Mexicans $2.00 

" slaughtering one woman carrying water to 

wounded * .10 

" extra work on two different Sabbaths (one 
bombardment and one assault), whereby 
the Mexicans were prevented from defiling 
themselves with the idolatries of high mass 3.50 

" throwing an especially fortunate and Prot- 
estant bombshell into the Cathedral at Vera 
Cruz, whereby several female Papists were 
slain at the altar 50 

" his proportion of cash paid for conquered ter- 

tt a ritory 1.75 

do. do. for conquering do 1.50 

" manuring do. with new superior compost 

called " American Citizen " 50 

Ia85 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



Brought forward $9.85 

To extending the area of freedom and Protes- 
tantism 01 

" glory 01 



Immediate payment is requested. 

N. B. Thankful for former favors, U. S. 
requests a continuance of patronage. Orders 
executed with neatness and despatch. Terms 
as low as those of any other contractor for the 
same kind and style of work. 

I can fancy the official answering my look of 
horror with — "Yes, Sir, it looks like a high 
charge, Sir ; but in these days slaughtering is 
slaughtering." Verily, I would that every one 
understood that it was ; for it goes about obtain- 
ing money under the false pretence of being 
glory. For me, I have an imagination which 
plays me uncomfortable tricks. It happens to 
me sometimes to see a slaughterer on his way 
home from his day's work, and forthwith my 
imagination puts a cocked-hat upon his head and 
epaulettes upon his shoulders, and sets him up 
as a candidate for the Presidency. So, also, on 
a recent public occasion, as the place assigned 
to the "Reverend Clergy" is just behind that 
of "Officers of the Army and Navy" in pro- 
cessions, it was my fortune to be seated at the 
dinner-table over against one of these respecta- 
ble persons. He was arrayed as (out of his own 
profession) only kings, court-officers, and foot- 
men are in Europe, and Indians in America. Now 
what does my over-officious imagination but set 
to work upon him, strip him of his gay livery, 
and present him to me coatless, his trousers 
thrust into the tops of a pair of boots thick with 
clotted blood, and a basket on his arm out of 
which lolled a gore-smeared axe, thereby de- 
stroying my relish for the temporal mercies 
upon the board before me ! — H. W.] 



A THIRD LETTER FROM 
B. SAWIN, ESQ. 

[Upon the following letter slender comment 
will be needful. In what river Selemnus has 
Mr. Sawin bathed, that he has become so 
swiftly oblivious of his former loves ? From an 
ardent and (as befits a soldier) confident wooer 
of that coy bride, the popular favor, Ave see him 
subside of a sudden into the (I trust not jilted) 
Cincinnatus, returning to his plough with a 
goodly sized branch of willow in his hand; fig- 
uratively returning, however, to a figurative 
plough, and from no profound affection for that 
honored implement of husbandry (for which, 
indeed, Mr. Sawin never displayed any decided 
predilection), but in order to be gracefully sum- 
moned therefrom to more congenial labors. It 
should seem that the character of the ancient 



Dictator had become part of the recognized 
stock of our modern political comedy, though, 
as our term of office extends to a quadrennial 
length, the parallel is not so minutely exact as 
could be desired. It is sufficiently so, however, 
for purposes of scenic representation. An hum- 
ble cottage (if built of logs, the better) forms 
the Arcadian background of the stage. This 
rustic paradise is labelled Ashland, Jaalam, 
North Bend, Marshfield, Kinderhook, or Baton 
Rouge, as occasion demands. Before the door 
stands a something with one handle (the other 
painted in proper perspective), which represents, 
in happy ideal vagueness, the plough. To this 
the defeated candidate rushes with delirious 
joy, welcomed as a father by appropriate groups 
of happy laborers, or from it the successful one 
is torn with difficulty, sustained alone by a 
noble sense of public duty. Only I have ob- 
served, that, if the scene be laid at Baton 
Rouge or Ashland, the laborers are kept care- 
fully in the background, and are heard to shout 
from behind the scenes in a singular tone re- 
sembling ululation, and accompanied by a sound 
not unlike vigorous clapping. This, however, 
may be artistically in keeping with the habits 
of the rustic population of those localities. The 
precise connection between agricultural pursuits 
and statesmanship I have not been able, after 
diligent inquiry, to discover. But, that my in- 
vestigations may not be barren of all fruit, I 
will mention one curious statistical fact, which 
I consider thoroughly established, namely, that 
no real farmer ever attains practically beyond a 
seat in the General Court, however theoret- 
ically qualified for more exalted station. 

It is probable that some other prospect has 
been opened to Mr. Sawin, and that he has not 
made this great sacrifice without some definite 
understanding in regard to a seat in the cabinet 
or a foreign mission. It may be supposed that 
we of Jaalam were not untouched by a feeling of 
villatic pride in beholding our townsman occu- 
pying so large a space in the public eye. And to 
me, deeply revolving the qualifications necessary 
to a candidate in these frugal times, those of 
Mr. S. seemed peculiarly adapted to a successful 
campaign. The loss of a leg, an arm, an eye, 
and four fingers reduced him so nearly to the 
condition of a vox et x>rceterea nihil that I could 
think of nothing but the loss of his head by 
which his chance could have been bettered. 
But since he has chosen to balk our suffrages, 
we must content ourselves with what we can 
get, remembering lactucas non esse dandas, dum 
cardui sufficiant. — H. W.] 

I spose you recollect thet I explained my 

gennle views 
In the last billet thet I writ, 'way down 

fruni Veery Cruze, 
Jest arter I'da kin' o' ben spontanously 

sot up 
To run unannermously fer the Preserden- 

tial cup; 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



O' course it worn't no wish o' mine, 't wuz 

ferflely distressin', 
But poppiler enthusiasm gut so almighty 

pressin' 
Thet, though like sixty all along I fumed 

an' fussed an' sorrered, 
There didn't seem no ways to stop their 

bringin' on me forrerd: 
Fact is, they udged the matter so, I 

could n't help admittin' 
The Father o' his Country's shoes no feet 

but mine 'ould fit in, 
Besides the savin' o' the soles fer ages to 

succeed, 
Seein' thet with one wannut foot, a pair 'd 

be more 'n I need; 
An', tell ye wut, them shoes '11 want a 

thund'rin sight o' patchin', 
Ef this ere fashion is to last we 've gut into 

o' hatchin' 
A pair o' second Washintons fer every new 

election, — 
Though, fer ez number one 's consarned, I 

don't make no objection. 

I wuz agoin' on to say thet wen at fust I saw 
The masses would stick to 't I wuz the 

Country's father-'n-law, 
(They would ha' hed it Father, but I told 

'em 'twould n't du, 
Coz thet wuz sutthin' of a sort they 

could n't split in tu, 
An' Washinton hed hed the thing laid 

fairly to his door, 
Nor darsn't say't worn't his'n, much ez 

sixty year afore,) 
But 't aint no matter ez to thet; wen I wuz 

nomernated, 
'T worn't natur but wut I should feel con- 

sid'able elated, 
An' wile the hooraw o' the thing wuz kind 

o' noo an' fresh, 
I thought our ticket would ha' caird the 

country with a resh. 

Sence I 've come hum, though, an' looked 

round, I think I seem to find 
Strong argimunts ez thick ez fleas to make 

me change my mind; 
It 's clear to any one whose brain aint fur 

gone in a phthisis, 
Thet hail Columby's happy land is goin' 

thru a crisis, 
An' 'twould n't noways du to hev the 

people's mind distracted 



By bein' all to once by sev'ral pop'lar 

names attackted; 
'T would save holl haycartloads o' fuss an' 

three four months o' jaw, 
Ef some illustrous paytriot should back out 

an' withdraw; 
So, ez I aint a crooked stick, jest like — 

like ole (I swow, 
I dunno ez I know his name) — I '11 go 

back to my plough. 
Wenever an Amerikin distinguished poli- 

tishin 
Begins to try et wut they call definin' his 

posishin, 
Wal, I, fer one, feel sure he aint gut nothin' 

to define; 
It 's so nine cases out o' ten, but jest that 

tenth is mine; 
An' 't aint no more 'n is proper 'n' right in 

sech a sitooation 
To hint the course you think '11 be the 

savin' o' the nation; 
To funk right out o' p'lit'cal strife aint 

thought to be the thing, 
Without you deacon off the toon you want 

your folks should sing; 
So I edvise the noomrous friends thet 's in 

one boat with me 
To jest up killick, jam right down their 

helium hard alee, 
Haul the sheets taut, an', layin' out upon 

the Suthun tack, 
Make fer the safest port they can, wich, / 

think, is Ole Zack. 

Next thing you '11 want to know, I spose, 

wut argimunts I seem 
To see thet makes me think this ere '11 be 

the strongest team; 
Fust place, I've ben consid'ble round in 

bar-rooms an' saloons 
Agetherin' public sentiment, 'mongst Dem- 

mercrats and Coons, 
An' 't aint ve'y offen thet I meet a chap 

but wut goes in 
Fer Rough an' Ready, fair an' square, huf s, 

taller, horns, an' skin; 
I don't deny but wut, fer one, ez fur ez I 

could see, 
I did n't like at fust the Pheladelphy nom- 

ernee : 
I could ha' pinted to a man thet wuz, I 

guess, a peg 
Higher than him, — a soger, tu, an' with a 

wooden leg; 



214 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



But every day with more an' more o' Tay- 
lor zeal I 'm burnin', 

Seein' wich way the tide thet sets to office 
is aturniu' ; 

Wy, into Bellers's we notched the votes 
down on three sticks, — 

'T wuz Birdofredum one, Cass aught, an' 
Taylor twenty-six, 

An' bein' the on'y canderdate thet wuz 
upon the ground, 

They said 't wuz no more 'n right thet I 
should pay the drinks all round; 

Ef I 'd expected sech a trick, I would n't 
ha' cut my foot 

By goin' an' votin' fer myself like a con- 
sumed coot; 

It did n't make no deff'rence, though; I 
wish I may be cust, 

Ef Bellers wuz n't slim enough to say he 
would n't trust ! 

Another pint thet influences the minds o' 

sober jedges 
Is thet the Gin'ral hez n't gut tied hand an' 

foot with pledges; 
He hez n't told ye wut he is, an' so there 

aint no knowin' 
But wut he may turn out to be the best 

there is agoin' ; 
This, at the on'y spot thet pinched, the shoe 

directly eases, 
Coz every one is free to 'xpect percisely 

wut he pleases: 
I want free-trade; you don't; the Gin'ral 

is n't bound to neither; — 
I vote my way; you, yourn; an' both air 

sooted to a T there. 
Ole Rough an' Ready, tu, 's a Wig, but 

without bein' ultry; 
He 's like a holsome hayin' day, thet 's 

warm, but is n't sultry ; 
He 's jest wut I should call myself, a kin' 

o' scratch ez 't ware, 
Thet aint exacly all a wig nor wholly your 

own hair; 
I 've ben a Wig three weeks myself, jest o' 

this mod'rate sort, 
An' don't find them an' Demmercrats so 

defferent ez I thought; 
They both act pooty much alike, an' push 

an' scrouge an' cus; 
They 're like two pickpockets in league fer 

Uncle Sam well's pus; 
Each takes a side, an' then they squeeze 

the ole man in between 'em, 



Turn all his pockets wrong side out an' 
quick ez lightnin' clean 'em; 

To nary one on 'em I 'd trust a secon'- 
handed rail 

No furder off 'an I could sling a bullock 
by the tail. 

Webster sot matters right in thet air Mash- 

fiel' speech o' his'n; — 
" Taylor," sez he, " aint nary ways the one 

thet I'da chizzen, 
Nor he aint fittin' fer the place, an' like 

ez not he aint 
No more 'n a tough ole bullethead, an' no 

gret of a saint; 
But then," sez he, " obsarve my pint, he 's 

jest ez good to vote fer 
Ez though the greasin' on him worn't a 

thing to hire Choate fer; 
Aint it ez easy done to drop a ballot in a 

box 
Fer one ez 't is fer t' other, fer the bull-dog 

ez the fox ? " 
It takes a mind like Dannel's, fact, ez big 

ez all ou' doors, 
To find out thet it looks like rain arter it 

fairly pours; 
I 'gree with him, it aint so dreffle trouble- 
some to vote 
Fer Taylor arter all, — it 's jest to go an' 

change your coat; 
Wen he 's once greased, you '11 swaller him 

an' never know on ' t, source, 
Unless he scratches, goin' down, with them 

'ere Gin'ral's spurs. 
I've ben a votin' Demmercrat, ez reg'lar 

as a clock, 
But don't find goin' Taylor gives my narves 

no gret 'f a shock; 
Truth is, the cutest leadin' Wig s > ever sence 

fust they found 
Wich side the bread gut buttered on, hev 

kep' a edgin' round; 
They kin' o' slipt the planks frum out th' 

ole platform one by one 
An' made it gradooally noo, 'fore folks 

know'd wut wuz done, 
Till, fur 'z I know, there aint an inch thet 

I could lay my han' on, 
But I, or any Demmercrat, feels comf table 

to stan' on, 
An' ole Wig doctrines act'lly look, their 

occ'pants bein' gone, 
Lonesome ez steddles on a mash without no 

hayricks on. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



215 



I spose it 's time now I should give my 

thoughts upon the plan, 
Thet chipped the shell at Buffalo, o' settin' 

up ole Van. 
I used to vote fer Martin, but, I swan, I 'm 

clean disgusted, — 
He aint the man thet I can say is fittin' to 

be trusted; 
He aint half antislav'ry 'nough, nor I aint 

sure, ez some be, 
He 'd go in fer abolishin' the Deestrick o' 

Columby; 
An', now I come to racollec', it kin' o' makes 

me sick 'z 
A horse, to think o' wut he wuz in eighteen 

thirty-six. 
An' then, another thing; — I guess, though 

mebby I am wrong, 
This Buff'lo plaster aint agoin' to dror al- 
mighty strong; 
Some folks, I know, hev gut th' idee thet 

No'thun dough '11 rise, 
Though, 'fore I see it riz an' baked, I 

would n't trust my eyes; 
'T will take more emptins, a long chalk, 

than this noo party 's gut, 
To give sech heavy cakes ez them a start, I 

tell ye wut. 
But even ef they caird the day, there would 

n't be no endurin' 
To stan' upon a platform with sech critters 

ez Van Buren; — 
An' his son John, tu, I can't think how thet 

'ere chap should dare 
To speak ez he doos; wy, they say he used 

to cuss an' swear ! 
I spose he never read the hymn thet tells 

how down the stairs 
A feller with long legs wuz throwed thet 

would n't say his prayers. 
This brings me to another pint: the leaders 

o' the party 
Aint jest sech men ez I can act along with 

free an' hearty; 
They aint not quite respectable, an' wen a 

feller's morrils 
Don't toe the straightest kin' o' mark, wy, 

him an' me jest quarrils. 
I went to a free soil meetin' once, an' wut 

d' ye think I see ? 
A feller was aspoutin' there thet act'lly 

come to me, 
About two year ago last spring, ez nigh ez 

I can jedge, 



An' axed me ef I didn't want to sign the 

Temprunce pledge! 
He 's one o' them that goes about an' sez 

you hed n't oughter 
Drink nothin', mornin', noon, or night, 

stronger 'an Taunton water. 
There 's one rule I 've ben guided by, in 

settlin' how to vote, oilers, — 
I take the side thet isn't took by them. 

consarned teetotallers. 

Ez fer the niggers, I 've ben South, an' thet 

hez changed my min'; 
A lazier, more ongratef ul set you could n't 

nowers fin'. 
You know I mentioned in my last thet I 

should buy a nigger, 
Ef I could make a purchase at a pooty 

mod'rate figger; 
So, ez there 's nothin' in the world I'm 

fonder of 'an gunnin', 
I closed a bargain finally to take a feller 

runnin'. 
I shou'dered queen's-arm an' stumped out, 

an' wen I come t' th' swamp, 
'T worn't very long afore I gut upon the 

nest o' Pomp; 
I come acrost a kin' o' hut, an', playin round 

the door, 
Some little woolly-headed cubs, ez many 'z 

six or more. 
At fust I thought o' firin', but think twice is 

safest oilers; 
There aint, thinks I, not one on 'em but 's 

wuth his twenty dollars, 
Or would be, ef I hed 'em back into a 

Christian land, — 
How temptin' all on 'em would look upon 

an auction-stand! 
(Not but wut / hate Slavery, in th' abstract, 

stem to starn, — 
I leave it ware our fathers did, a privit 

State consarn.) 
Soon 'z they see me, they yelled an' run, 

but Pomp wuz out ahoein' 
A leetle patch o' corn he hed, or else there 

aint no knowin' 
He would n't ha' took a pop at me ; but I 

hed gut the start, 
An' wen he looked, I vow he groaned ez 

though he 'd broke his heart; 
He done it like a wite man, tu, ez nat'ral ez 

a pictur, 
The imp'dunt, pis'nous hypocrite! wus 'an 

a boy constrictur. 



2l6 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



" You can't gum me, I tell ye now, an' so 

you need n't try, 
I 'xpect my eye-teeth every mail, so jest 

shet up," sez I. 
" Don't go to actin' ugly now, or else I '11 

let her strip, 
You 'd best draw kindly, seein' 'z how I 've 

gut ye on the hip; 
Besides, you darned ole fool, it aint no gret 

of a disaster 
To be benev'lently druv back to a contented 

master, 
Ware you hed Christian priv'ledges you 

don't seem quite aware on, 
Or you 'd ha' never run away from bein' 

well took care on; 
Ez fer kin' treatment, wy, he wuz so fond 

on ye, he said 
He 'd give a fifty spot right out, to git ye, 

'live or dead; 
Wite folks aint sot by half ez much; 'mem- 
ber I run away, 
Wen I wuz bound to Cap'n Jakes, to Mat- 

tysqumscot Bay; 
Don' know him, likely ? Spose not; wal, 

the mean old codger went 
An' offered — wut reward, think ? Wal, 

it worn't no less 'n a cent." 

Wal, I jest gut 'em into line, an' druv 'em 

on afore me; 
The pis'nous brutes, I 'd no idee o' the ill- 
will they bore me; 
We walked till som'ers about noon, an' 

then it grew so hot 
I thought it best to camp awile, so I chose 

out a spot 
Jest under a magnoly tree, an' there right 

down I sot; 
Then I unstrapped my wooden leg, coz it 

begun to chafe, 
An' laid it down 'longside o' me, supposin' 

all wuz safe; 
I made my darkies all set down around me 

in a ring, 
An' sot an' kin' o' ciphered up how much 

the lot would bring; 
But, wile I drinked the peaceful cup of a 

pure heart an' min' 
(Mixed with some whiskey, now an' then), 

Pomp he snaked up behin', 
An' creepin' grad'lly close tu, ez quiet ez a 

mink, 
Jest grabbed my leg, an' then pulled foot, 

quicker 'an you could wink, 



An', come to look, they each on 'em hed 

gut behin' a tree, 
An' Pomp poked out the leg a piece, jest 

so ez I could see, 
An' yelled to me to throw away my pistils 

an' my gun, 
Or else thet they 'd cair off the leg, an' 

fairly cut an' run. 
I vow I did n't b'lieve there wuz a decent 

alligatur 
Thet hed a heart so destitoot o' common 

human natur; 
However, ez there worn't no help, I finally 

give in 
An' heft my arms away to git my leg safe 

back agin. 

Pomp gethered all the weapins up, an' then 

he come an' grinned, 
He showed his ivory some, I guess, an' sez, 

"You're fairly pinned; 
Jest buckle on your leg agin, an' git right 

up ' come, 
'T wun't du fer f ammerly men like me to 

be so long frum hum." 
At fust I put my foot right down an' swore 

I would n't budge. 
" Jest ez you choose," sez he, quite cool, 

" either be shot or trudge." 
So this black-hearted monster took an' 

act'lly druv me back 
Along the very feetmarks o' my happy 

mornin' track, 
An' kep' me pris'ner 'bout six months, an' 

worked me, tu, like sin, 
Till I hed gut his corn an' his Carliny 

taters in; 
He made me lam him readin', tu (although 

the crittur saw 
How much it hut my morril sense to act 

agin the law), 
So'st he could read a Bible he 'd gut; an' 

axed ef I could pint 
The North Star out; but there I put his 

nose some out o' jint, 
Fer I weeled roun' about sou'west, an', 

lookin' up a bit, 
Picked out a middlin' shiny one an' tole 

him thet wuz it. 
Fin'lly he took me to the door, an' givin' 

me a kick, 
Sez, " Ef you know wut 's best fer ye, be 

off, now, double-quick; 
The winter-time 's a comin' on, an' though 

I gut ye cheap, 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



217 



You 're so darned lazy, I don't think you 're 

hardly wuth your keep; 
Besides, the childrin 's growin' up, an' you 

aint jest the model 
I 'd like to hev 'em immertate, an' so you 'd 

better toddle ! " 

Now is there any thin' on airth '11 ever prove 

to me 
Thet renegader slaves like him air fit fer 

bein' free ? 
D' you think they '11 suck me in to jine the 

Buff'lo chaps, an' them 
Rank infidels thet go agin the Scriptur'l 

cus o' Shem ? 
Not by a jugfull ! sooner 'n thet, I 'd go 

thru fire an' water; 
Wen I hev once made up my mind, a 

meet'nhus aint sotter; 
No, not though all the crows thet flies to 

pick my bones wuz cawin', - — 
I guess we 're in a Christian land, — 

Yourn, 

BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN. 

[Here, patient reader, we take leave of each 
other, I trust with some mutual satisfaction. I 
say patient, for I love not that kind which 
skims dippingly over the surface of the page, as 
swallows over a pool before rain. By such no 
pearls shall be gathered. But if no pearls there 
be (as, indeed, the world is not without example 
of books wherefrom the longest-winded diver 
shall bring up no more than his proper handful 
of mud), yet let us hope than an oyster or two 
may reward adequate perseverance. If neither 
pearls nor oysters, yet is patience itself a gem 
worth diving deeply for. 

It may seem to some that too much space has 
been usurped by my own private lucubrations, 
and some may be fain to bring against me that 
old jest of him who preached all his hearers out 
of the meeting-house save only the sexton, who, 
remaining for yet a little space, from a sense 
of official duty, at last gave out also, and, pre- 
senting the keys, humbly requested our preacher 
to lock the doors, when he should have wholly 
relieved himself of his testimony. I confess to 
a satisfaction in the self act of preaching, nor 
do I esteem a discourse to be wholly thrown 
away even upon a sleeping or unintelligent 
auditory. I cannot easily believe that the Gos- 
pel of Saint John, which Jacques Cartier or- 
dered to be read in the Latin tongue to the 
Canadian savages, upon his first meeting with 
them, fell altogether upon stony ground. For 
the earnestness of the preacher is a sermon ap- 
preciable by dullest intellects^ and most alien 
ears. In this wise did Episcopius convert many 
to his opinions, who yet understood not the 
language in which he discoursed. The chief 



thing is that the messenger believe that he has 
an authentic message to deliver. For counter- 
feit messengers that mode of treatment which 
Father John de Piano Carpini relates to have 
prevailed among the Tartars would seem ef- 
fectual, and, perhaps, deserved enough. For 
my own part, I may lay claim to so much of the 
spirit of martyrdom as would have led me to 
go into banishment with those clergymen whom 
Alphonso the Sixth of Portugal drave out of 
his kingdom for refusing to shorten their pulpit 
eloquence. It is possible, that, having been in- 
vited into my brother Biglow's desk, I may 
have been too little scrupulous in using it for 
the venting of my own peculiar doctrines to a 
congregation drawn together in the expectation 
and with the desire of hearing him. 

I am not wholly unconscious of a peculiarity 
of mental organization which impels me, like 
the railroad-engine with its train of cars, to run 
backward for a short distance in order to obtain 
a fairer start. I may compare myself to one 
fishing from the rocks when the sea runs high, 
who, misinterpreting the suction of the under- 
tow for the biting of some larger fish, jerks 
suddenly, and finds that he has caught botfom, 
hauling in upon the end of his fine a trail of 
various algai, among which, nevertheless, the 
naturalist may haply find somewhat to repay 
the disappointment of the angler. Yet have I 
conscientiously endeavored to adapt myself to 
the impatient temper of the age, daily degener- 
ating more and more from the high standard of 
our pristine New England. To the catalogue 
of lost arts I would mournfully add also that of 
listening to two-hour sermons. Surely we have 
been abridged into a race of pygmies. For, 
truly, in those of the old discourses yet subsist- 
ing to us in print, the endless spinal column of 
divisions and subdivisions can be likened to 
nothing so exactly as to the vertebrae of the 
saurians, whence the theorist may conjecture a 
race of Anakim proportionate to the withstand- 
ing of these other monsters. I say Anakim 
rather than Nephelim, because there seem 
reasons for supposing that the race of those 
whose heads (though no giants) are constantly 
enveloped in clouds (which that name imports) 
will never become extinct. The attempt to 
vanquish the innumerable heads of one of those 
afore-mentioned discourses may supply us with 
a plausible interpretation of the second labor of 
Hercules, and his successful experiment with 
fire affords us a useful precedent. 

But while I lament the degeneracy of the age 
in this regard, I cannot refuse to succumb to its 
influence. Looking out through Ay study- 
window, I see Mr. Biglow at a distance busy in 
gathering his Baldwins, of which, to judge by 
the number of barrels lying about under the 
trees, his crop is more abundant than my own, 
— by which sight I am admonished to turn to 
those orchards of the mind wherein my labors 
may be more prospered, and apply myself dili- 
gently to the preparation of my next Sabbath's 
discourse. — H. W.] 



2l8 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



MELIBCEUS-HIPPONAX 



THE 

33tgIoto Papers, 
SECOND SERIES. 



"EcrTiv ap' 6 iSta>Ti<r/ibs evCore i 
efjL<j)avt<TTtKu>Tepov. 



) Koa-fjiov irapairo\v 



" J'aimerois mieulx que mon fils apprinst aux tavernes 
a parler, qu'aux escholes de la parlerie." 

Montaigne. 

„ Unfer ©pracfc ift aufy ein ©pradj unt> tan fo ao^I ein 
<5ac£ nennen ai§ Die Satetner saccus." 

FlSCHAET. 

" Vim rebus aliquando ipsa verborum humilitas affert." 

QUINTILIANUS. 

" O ma lengo, 
Plantar ey une estelo a toun froun encrumit ! " 

Jasmin. 

" Multos enim, quibus loquendi ratio non desit, in- 
venias, quos curiose potius loqui dixeris quam Latine ; 
quomodo et ilia Attica anus Theophrastum, hominem 
alioqui disertissimum, annotata unius affectatione verbi, 
hospitem dixit, nee alio se id deprehendisse interrogata 
respondit, quam quod nimium Attice loqueretur." — 

QuiNTILIANUS. 

" Et Anglice sermonicari solebat populo, sed secun- 
dum linguam Norfolchie ubi natus et nutritus erat." 
— Cjronica Jocelini. 

"La politique est une pierre attached au cou de la 
litterature, et qui en moins de six mois la submerge. 
. . . Cette politique va offenser mortellement une 
moitie" des lecteurs, et ennuyer l'autre qui l'a trouv^e 
bien autrement speciale et energique dans le journal du 
matin." — Henri Beyle. 

The best introduction to the Second Series 
of the Biglow Papers is to be found in Low- 
ell's prose papers on political topics contributed 
to the Atlantic Monthly and the North Ameri- 
can Review from 1858 to 1860, some of which 
have been reprinted in the fifth volume of the 
Riverside edition of his Writings. Just before 
Mr. Lincoln's election in 1860 he wrote : " We 
are approaching 1 a crisis in our domestic pol- 
icy more momentous than any that has arisen 
since we became a nation." The crisis arrived, 
and during 1861 his political sagacity, his ar- 
dent patriotism, his moral genius were dis- 
played in a series of essays which did much to 
enlighten and confirm the roused spirit of the 
Northern people. But more was wanting of 
him. His verse could reach more ears than 
his or any other writer's prose. He was urged 
to write fresh Biglow Papers, and in a letter 
dated the last day of the year 1860, Lowell 
wrote : " As for new Biglow Papers, God knows 
how I should like to write them, if they would 
only make me as they did before. But I am so 
occupied and bothered that I have no time to 



brood, which with me is as needful a prelimi- 
nary to hatching anything as with a clucking 
hen. However, I am going to try my hand, and 
see what comes of it." It was a year, however, 
before the first of the new series appeared in 
the Atlantic Monthly, and he wrote of it to Miss 
Norton : " I have been writing a Biglow Paper, 
and I feel as nervous about it as a young au- 
thor not yet weaned of public favor. It was 
clean against my critical judgment, for I don't 
bedeve in resuscitations, — we hear no good of 
the posthumous Lazarus, — but I may get into 
the vein and do some good." The first of the 
series was published in January, 1862, and the 
stimulus Lowell needed came quickly in the 
Trent affair, which drew out of him at once 
Mason and Slidell : a Yankee Idyll, which ap- 
peared in February. " If I am not mistaken," 
he wrote to Mr. Fields on sending it, " it will 
take." The third followed in March, and Low- 
ell wrote again to Mr. Fields : "As for the 
Biglow — glad you like it. If not so good as 
the others, the public will be sure to. I think 
well of the Fable and believe there is nothing 
exotic therein. I am going to kill Wilbur 
before long, and give a ' would-have-been ' 
obituary on him in the American style. That 
is, for example, ' he wrote no epic, but if he 
had, he would have been,' etc. I don't know 
how many of these future-conditional geniuses 
we have produced — many score, certainly. . . . 
Good-by-yours — with a series of Biglows rising, 
like the visionary kings before Macbeth, to de- 
stroy all present satisfaction." 

Lowell did not kill Parson Wilbur imme- 
diately. Three more numbers followed, the 
fourth, fifth, and sixth, in April, May, and June. 
Then there was an interval when the rustic 
muse refused to come at a call. '' It 's no use," 
the poet wrote June 5, 1862, to Fields, who had 
evidently been asking for the July portion ; " I 
reverse the gospel difficulty, and while the flesh 
is willing enough the spirit is weak. My 
brain must lie fallow a spell — there is no su- 
perphosphate for those worn-out fields. Bet- 
ter no crop than small potatoes. I want to 
have the passion of the thing on me again and 
beget lusty Biglows. I am all the more de- 
jected because you have treated me so well. 
But I must rest awhile. My brain is out of 
kilter." Mr. Fields returned to the attack the 
next month, and Lowell wrote him a humorous 
letter in which he expressed his amazement at 
having kept his word about the six already 
written, and had some hopes that two ideas he 
cherished might come to something. At last 
he seems to have fallen back on his scheme for 
putting Parson Wilbur to death, and made it an 
excuse for the seventh paper, Latest Views of 
Mr. Biglow, which appeared in The Atlantic for 
February, 1863. Other occupations at this time 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



219 



engrossed him, and he again wrote to Mr. Fields, 
October 18, 1864 : " Firstly, whar 's Biglow ? 
Let echo repeat her customary observation, 
adding only that I began one, but it would not 
go. I had idees in plenty, but all I could do, 
they would not marry themselves to immortal 
worse. Not only did I wish to write, for there 
was a chance of a thousand, but I wanted 
money — so there can be no doubt I was in 
earnest." It was not till peace was imminent 
that he wrote again, the moving tenth satire, 
which was published in April, 1865. The final 
paper, called out by the Johnson retrograde 
movement, was published in The Atlantic for 
May, 1866. The papers numbered VIII. and 
IX. did not appear in print until the book was 
published in the fall of the same year. 

Lowell more than once spoke of this second 
series of Biglow Papers as in his judgment 
better than the first. In a letter to Thomas 
Hughes twenty years after the book appeared, 
he wrote as follows: "Pray, who is ' F. T.,' 
who has been writing about me in so friendly 
a way in the Cornhill ? He is a little out now 
and then, but strikes me as in the main judi- 
cious. He is wrong about the second part of 
the Biglow Papers. I think had he read these 
first, he would have seen they had more per- 
manent qualities than their predecessors, less 
fun and more humor perhaps. And pray what 
natural scenery would he have me describe but 
my own ? If you know him, tell him I think 
two European birds beat any of ours, the nightin- 
gale and the blackbird. The lark beats any of 
them also by sentiment and association, though 
not vocally. I suppose I should have been a 
more poetical poet if I had not been a profes- 
sor. A poet should feed on nothing but poetry 
as they used to say a drone could be turned 
into a queen-bee by a diet of bee-bread." 

When the book appeared it bore a dedica- 
tion to E. R. Hoar, and was introduced by the 
essay on the Yankee form of English speech, 
which, as we have seen, he had long ago pro- 
posed writing. This Introduction is so dis- 
tinctly an essay that it has been thought best 
to print it as an appendix to this volume, 
rather than allow it to break in upon the pages 
of verse. There is, however, one passage in it 
which may be repeated here, since it bears di- 
rectly upon the poem which serves as a sort of 
prelude to the series. 

" The only attempt I had ever made at any- 
thing like a pastoral (if that may be called an 
attempt which was the result almost of pure 
accident) was in The Courtin\ While the intro- 
duction to the First Series was going through 
the press, I received word from the printer 
that there was a blank page left which must 
be filled. I sat down at once and improvised 
another fictitious ' notice of the press,' in which, 



because verse would fill up space more cheaply 
than prose, I inserted an extract from a sup- 
posed ballad of Mr. Biglow. I kept no copy 
of it, and the printer, as directed, cut it off 
when the gap was filled. Presently I began 
to receive letters asking for the rest of it, 
sometimes for the balance of it. I had none, 
but to answer such demands, I patched a con- 
elusion upon it in a later edition. Those who 
had only the first continued to importune me. 
Afterward, being asked to write it out as an 
autograph for the Baltimore Sanitary Commis- 
sion Fair, I added other verses, into some of 
which I infused a little more sentiment in a 
homely way, and after a fashion completed it 
by sketching in the characters and making a 
connected story. Most likely I have spoiled it, 
but I shall put it at the end of this Introduc- 
tion, to answer once for all those kindly impor- 
tunings." 

THE COURTIN' 

God makes sech nights, all white an' still 

Fur 'z you can look or listen, 
Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill, 

All silence an' all glisten. 

Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown 
An' peeked in thru' the winder, 

An' there sot Huldy all alone, 
'ith no one nigh to hender. 

A fireplace filled the room's one side 
With half a cord o' wood in — 

There war n't no stoves (tell comfort died) 
To bake ye to a puddin'. 

The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out 
Towards the pootiest, bless her, 

An' leetle flames danced all about 
The chiny on the dresser. 

Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, 

An' in amongst 'em rusted 
The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young 

Fetched back f'om Concord busted. 

The very room, coz she was in, 
Seemed warm f'om floor to ceilin', 

An' she looked full ez rosy agin 
Ez the apples she was peelin'. 

'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look 

On sech a blessed cretur, 
A dogrose blushin' to a brook 

Ain't modester nor sweeter. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



He was six foot o' man, A 1, 

Clear grit an' human natur', 
None could n't quicker pitch a ton 

Nor dror a furrer straighter. 

He 'd sparked it with full twenty gals, 
Hed squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em, 

Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells — 
All is, he could n't love 'em. 

But long o' her his veins 'ould run 
All crinkly like curled maple, 

The side she breshed felt full o' sun 
Ez a south slope in Ap'iL 

She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing 

Ez hisn in the choir; 
My ! when he made Ole Hunderd ring, 

She knowed the Lord was nigher. 

An' she 'd blush scarlit, right in prayer, 
When her new meetin'-bunnet 

Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair 
0' blue eyes sot upun it. 

Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some 1 
She seemed to 've gut a new soul, 

For she felt sartin-sure he 'd come, 
Down to her very shoe-sole. 

She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu, 

A-raspin' on the scraper, — 
All ways to once her feelins flew 

Like sparks in burnt-up paper. 

He kin' o' l'itered on the mat, 

Some doubtfle o' the sekle, 
His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, 

But hern went pity Zekle. 

An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk 
Ez though she wished him furder, 

An' on her apples kep' to work, 
Parin' away like murder. 

" You want to see my Pa, I s'pose ? " 
" Wal ... no ... I come dasignin' " — 

" To see my Ma ? She 's sprinklin' clo'es 
Agin to-morrer's i'nin'." 

To say why gals acts so or so, 

Or don't, 'ould be persumin'; 
Mebby to mean yes an' say no 

Conies nateral to women. 



He stood a spell on one foot fust, 
Then stood a spell on t' other, 

An' on which one he felt the wust 

He could n't ha' told ye nuther. * 

Says he, "I 'd better call agin;" 
Says she, " Think likely, Mister:" 

Thet last word pricked him like a pin, 
An' . . . Wal, he up an' kist her. 

When Ma binieby upon 'em slips, 

Huldy sot pale ez ashes, 
All kin' o' smily roun' the lips 

An' teary roun' the lashes. 

For she was jes' the quiet kind 

Whose naturs never vary, 
Like streams that keep a summer mind 

Snowhid in Jenooary. 

The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued 

Too tight for all expressin', 
Tell mother see how metters stood, 

An' gin 'em both her blessin'. 

Then her red come back like the tide 

Down to the Bay o' Fundy, 
An' all I know is they was cried 

In meetin' come nex' Sunday. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 

SECOND SERIES 

No. I 

BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN, ESQ., TO 
MR. HOSEA BIGLOW 

LETTER FROM THE REVEREND HOMER 
WILBUR, M. A., ENCLOSING THE EPISTLE 
AFORESAID 

Jaalam, 15th Nov., 1861. 

It is not from any idle wish to obtrude 
my humble person with undue prominence 
upon the publick view that I resume my 
pen upon the present occasion. Juniores ad 
labores. But having been a main instrument 
in rescuing the talent of my young parish- 
ioner from being buried in the ground, by 
giving it such warrant with the world as 
could be derived from a name already 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



widely known by several printed discourses 
(all of which I may be permitted without im- 
modesty to state have been deemed worthy 
of preservation in the Library of Harvard 
College by my esteemed friend Mr. Sibley), 
it seemed becoming that I should not only 
testify to the genuineness of the following 
production, but call attention to it, the 
more as Mr. Biglow had so long been silent 
as to be in danger of absolute oblivion. I 
insinuate no claim to any share in the 
authorship (vix ea nostra voco) of the works 
already published by Mr. Biglow, but 
merely take to myself the credit of having 
fulfilled toward them the office of taster 
(experto crede), who, having first tried, could 
afterward bear witness (credenzen it was 
aptly named by the Germans), an office al- 
ways arduous, and sometimes even danger- 
ous, as in the case of those devoted persons 
who venture their lives in the deglutition of 
patent medicines {dolus latet in generations, 
there is deceit in the most of them) and 
thereafter are wonderfully preserved long 
enough to append their signatures to tes- 
timonials in the diurnal and hebdomadal 
prints. I say not this as covertly glancing 
at the authors of certain manuscripts which 
have been submitted to my literary judg- 
ment (though an epick in twenty-four books 
on the " Taking of Jericho " might, save 
for the prudent forethought of Mrs. Wilbur 
in secreting the same just as I had arrived 
beneath the walls and was beginning a 
catalogue of the various horns and their 
blowers, too ambitiously emulous in longa- 
nimity of Homer's list of ships, might, I 
say, have rendered frustrate any hope I 
could entertain vacare Musis for the small 
remainder of my days), but only the further 
to secure myself against any imputation of 
unseemly forthputting. I will barely sub- 
join, in this connexion, that, whereas Job 
was left to desire, in the soreness of his 
heart, that his adversary had written a 
book, as perchance misanthropically wish- 
ing to indite a review thereof, yet was not 
Satan allowed so far to tempt him as to 
send Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar each with 
an unprinted work in his wallet to be sub- 
mitted to his censure. But of this enough. 
Were I in need of other excuse, I might 
add that I write by the express desire of 
Mr. Biglow himself, whose entire winter 
I leisure is occupied, as he assures me, in an- 



swering demands for autographs, a labor 
exacting enough in itself, and egregiously 
so to him, who, being no ready penman, 
cannot sign so much as his name without 
strange contortions of the face (his nose, 
even, being essential to complete success) 
and painfully suppressed Saint- Vitus-dance 
of every muscle in his body. This, with his 
having been put in the Commission of the 
Peace by our excellent Governor (0, si sic 
omnes /) immediately on his accession to 
office, keeps him continually employed. 
Haud inexpertus loquor, having for many 
years written myself J. P., and being not 
seldom applied to for specimens of my chi- 
rography, a request to which I have some- 
times over weakly assented, believing as I 
do that nothing written of set purpose can 
properly be called an autograph, but only 
those unpremeditated sallies and lively 
runnings which betray the fireside Man in- 
stead of the hunted Notoriety doubling on 
his pursuers. But it is time that I should 
bethink me of St. Austin's prayer, libera me 
a meipso, if I would arrive at the matter in 
hand. 

Moreover, I had yet another reason for 
taking up the pen myself. I am informed 
that " The Atlantic Monthly " is mainly in- 
debted for its success to the contributions 
and editorial supervision of Dr. Holmes, 
whose excellent "Annals of America" 
occupy an honored place upon my shelves. 
The journal itself I have never seen; but if 
this be so, it might seem that the recom- 
mendation of a brother-clergyman (though 
par magis quam similis') should carry a 
greater weight. I suppose that you have a 
department for historical lucubrations, and 
should be glad, if deemed desirable, to for- 
ward for publication my " Collections for 
the Antiquities of Jaalam," and my (now 
happily complete) pedigree of the Wilbur 
family from its fans et origo, the Wild Boar 
of Ardennes. Withdrawn from the active 
duties of my profession by the settlement of 
a colleague-pastor, the Reverend Jeduthun 
Hitchcock, formerly of Brutus Four-Cor- 
ners, I might find time for further contri- 
butions to general literature on similar 
topicks. I have made large advances to- 
wards a completer genealogy of Mrs. Wil- 
bur's family, the Pilcoxes, not, if I know 
myself, from any idle vanity, but with the 
sole desire of rendering myself useful in my 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



day and generation. Nulla dies sine lined. I 
inclose a meteorological register, a list of the 
births, deaths, and marriages, and a few me- 
morabilia of longevity in Jaalam East Parish 
for the last half-century. Though spared 
to the unusual period of more than eighty 
years, I find no diminution of my faculties 
or abatement of my natural vigor, except a 
scarcely sensible decay of memory and a 
necessity of recurring to younger eyesight 
or spectacles for the finer print in Cruden. 
It would gratify me to make some further 
provision for declining years from the 
emoluments of my literary labors. I had 
intended to effect an insurance on my life, 
but was deterred therefrom by a circular 
from one of the offices, in which the sudden 
death of so large a proportion of the in- 
sured was set forth as an inducement, that 
it seemed to me little less than a tempting 
of Providence. Neque in summd inopid 
levis esse senectus potest, ne sapienti quidem. 

Thus far concerning Mr. Biglow ; and 
so much seemed needful (brevis esse laboro) 
by way of preliminary, after a silence of 
fourteen years. He greatly fears lest he 
may in this essay have fallen below himself, 
well knowing that, if exercise be dangerous 
on a full stomach, no less so is writing on a 
full reputation. Beset as he has been on 
all sides, he could not refrain, and would 
only imprecate patience till he shall again 
have " got the hang " (as he calls it) of an 
accomplishment long disused. The letter 
of Mr. Sawin was received some time in 
last Jnne, and others have followed which 
will in due season be submitted to the pub- 
lick. How largely his statements are to be 
depended on, 1 more than merely dubitate. 
He was always distinguished for a tendency 
to exaggeration, — it might almost be quali- 
fied by a stronger term. Fortiter mentire, 
aliquid hceret, seemed to be his favorite rule 
of rhetoric. That he is actually where he 
says he is the postmark would seem to con- 
firm ; that he was received with the publick 
demonstrations he describes would appear 
consonant with what we know of the habits 
of those regions ; but further than this I 
venture not to decide. 1 have sometimes 
suspected a vein of humor in him which 
leads him to speak by contraries ; but since, 
in the unrestrained intercourse of private 
life, I have never observed in him any 
striking powers of invention, I am the more 



willing to put a certain qualified faith in 
the incidents and the details of life and 
manners which give to his narratives some 
portion of the interest and entertainment 
which characterizes a Century Sermon. 

It may be expected of me that I should 
say something to justify myself with the 
world for a seeming inconsistency with my 
well - known principles in allowing my 
youngest son to raise a company for the 
war, a fact known to all through the me- 
dium of the publick prints. I did reason 
with the young man, but expellas naturam 
fared, tamen usque recurrit. Having myself 
been a chaplain in 1812, I could the less 
wonder that a man of war had sprung from 
my loins. It was, indeed, grievous to send 
my Benjamin, the child of my old age ; 
but after the discomfiture of Manassas, I 
with my own hands did buckle on his 
armor, trusting in the great Comforter 
and Commander for strength according to 
my need. For truly the memory of a brave 
son dead in his shroud were a greater staff 
of my declining years than a living coward 
(if those may be said to have lived who 
carry all of themselves into the grave with 
them), though his days might be long in 
the land, and he should get much goods. 
It is not till our earthen vessels are broken 
that we find and truly possess the treasure 
that was laid up in them. Migravi in 
animam meam, I have sought refuge in my 
own soul ; nor would I be shamed by the 
heathen comedian with his Nequam. illud 
verbum, bene vult, nisi bene facit. During 
our dark days, I read constantly in the 
inspired book of Job, which I believe to 
contain more food to maintain the fibre of 
the soul for right living and high thinking 
than all pagan literature together, though I 
would by no means vilipend the study of 
the classicks. There I read that Job said in 
his despair, even as the fool saith in his 
heart there is no God, — " The tabernacles 
of robbers prosper, and they that provoke 
God are secure." (Job xii. 6.) But I 
sought farther till I found this Scripture 
also, which I would have those perpend who 
have striven to turn our Israel aside to the 
worship of strange gods : " If I did de- 
spise the cause of my man-servant or of my 
maid-servant when they contended with me, 
what then shall I do when God riseth up ? 
and when he visiteth, what shall I answer 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



223 



him ? " (Job xxxi. 13, 14.) On this text 
I preached a discourse on the last day of 
Fasting and Humiliation with general ac- 
ceptance, though there were not wanting 
one or two Laodiceans who said that I 
should have waited till the President an- 
nounced his policy. But let us hope and 
pray, remembering this of Saint Gregory, 
Vult Deus rogari, vult cogi, vult quddam im- 
portunitate vinci. 

We had our first fall of snow on Friday 
last. Frosts have been unusually backward 
this fall. A singular circumstance occurred 
in this town on the 20th October, in the 
family of Deacon Pelatiah Tinkham. On 
the previous evening, a few moments be- 
fore family prayers, 

[The editors of the " Atlantic " find it neces- 
sary here to cut short the letter of their valued 
correspondent, which seemed calculated rather 
on the rates of longevity in Jaalam than for less 
favored localities. They have every encourage- 
ment to hope that he will write again.] 

With esteem and respect, 

Your obedient servant, 

Homer Wilbur, A. M. 

It 's some consid'ble of a spell sence I 

hain't writ no letters, 
An' ther' 's gret changes hez took place in 

all polit'cle metters; 
Some canderdates air dead an' gone, an' 

some hez ben defeated, 
Which 'mounts to pooty much the same; 

f er it 's ben proved repeated 
A betch o' bread thet hain't riz once ain't 

goin' to rise agin, 
An* it 's jest money thro wed away to put 

the emptins in: 
But thet 's wut folks wun't never larn ; 

they dunno how to go, 
Arter you want their room, no more 'n a 

bullet-headed beau; 
Ther' 's oilers chaps a-hangin' roun' thet 

can't see peatime 's past, 
Mis'ble as roosters in a rain, heads down 

an' tails half-mast: 
It ain't disgraceful bein' beat, when a holl 

nation doos it, 
But Chance is like an amberill, — it don't 

take twice to lose it. 

I spose you 're kin' o' cur'ous, now, to know 
why I hain't writ. 



Wal, I 've ben where a litt'ry taste don't 

somehow seem to git 
Th' encouragement a feller 'd think, thet 's 

used to public schools, 
An' where sech things ez paper 'n' ink air 

clean agin the rules: 
A kind o' vicyvarsy house, built dreffle 

strong an' stout, 
So 's 't honest people can't get in, ner 

t' other sort git out, 
An' with the winders so contrived, you 'd 

prob'ly like the view 
Better alookin' in than out, though it seems 

sing'lar, tu; 
But then the landlord sets by ye, can't bear 

ye out o' sight, 
And locks ye up ez reg'lar ez an outside 

door at night. 

This world is awfle contrary: the rope may 

stretch your neck 
Thet mebby kep' another chap f rum washin' 

off a wreck; 
An' you may see the taters grow in one poor 

feller's patch, 
So small no self-respectin' hen thet vallied 

time 'ould scratch, 
So small the rot can't find 'em out, an' then 

agin, nex' door, 
Ez big ez wut hogs dream on when they 're 

'most too fat to snore. 
But groutin' ain't no kin' o' use; an' ef the 

fust throw fails, 
Why, up an' try agin, thet 's all, — the cop- 
pers ain't all tails, 
Though I hev seen 'em when I thought they 

hed n't no more head 
Than 'd sarve a nussin' Brigadier thet gits 

some ink to shed. 

When I writ last, I 'd ben turned loose by 

thet blamed nigger, Pomp, 
Ferlorner than a musquash, ef you 'd took 

an' dreened his swamp: 
But I ain't o' the meechin' kind, thet sets 

an' thinks fer weeks 
The bottom 's out o' th' univarse coz their 

own gillpot leaks. 
I hed to cross bayous an' criks, (wal, it did 

beat all natur',) 
Upon a kin' o' corderoy, fust log, then 

alligator; 
Luck'ly, the critters warn't sharp-sot; I 

guess 't wuz overruled 



224 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



They 'd done their niornin's marketin' an' 

gut their hunger cooled; 
Fer missionaries to the Creeks an' runaways 

are viewed 
By them an' folks ez sent express to be 

their reg'lar food; 
Wutever 't wuz, they laid an' snoozed ez 

peacefully ez sinners, 
Meek ez disgestin' deacons be at ordination 

dinners ; 
Ef any on 'em turned an' snapped, I let 'em 

kin' o' taste 
My live-oak leg, an' so, ye see, ther' warn't 

no gret o' waste; 
Fer they found out in quicker time than ef 

they 'd ben to college 
'T warn't heartier food then though 't wuz 

made out o' the tree o' knowledge. 
But / tell you my other leg hed larned wut 

pizon-nettle meant, 
An' var'ous other usefle things, afore I 

reached a settlement, 
An' all o' me thet wuz n't sore an' sendin' 

prickles thru me 
Wuz jest the leg I parted with in lickin' 

Montezumy: 
A useful limb it 's ben to me, an' more of a 

support 
Than wut the other hez ben, — coz I dror 

my pension for 't. 

Wal, I gut in at last where folks wuz civer- 

lized an' white, 
Ez I diskivered to my cost afore 't warn't 

hardly night; 
Fer 'z I wuz settin' in the bar a-takin' sun- 
thin' hot, 
An' feelin' like a man agin, all over in one 

spot, 
A feller thet sot oppersite, arter a squint at 

me, 
Lep' up an' drawed his peacemaker, an', 

" Dash it, Sir," suz he, 
" I 'm doubledashed ef you ain't him thet 

stole my yaller chettle, 
(You 're all the stranger thet 's around,) so 

now you 've gut to settle; 
It ain't no use to argerfy ner try to cut up 

frisky, 
I know ye ez I know the smell of ole chain- 

lightnin' whiskey; 
We 're lor-abidin' folks down here, we '11 fix 

ye so 's 't a bar 
Would n' tech ye with a ten-foot pole; 

(Jedge, you jest warm the tar;) 



You '11 think you 'd better ha' gut among 

a tribe o' Mongrel Tartars, 
'fore we 've done showin' how we raise our 

Southun prize tar-martyrs; 
A moultin' fallen cherubim, ef he should 

see ye, 'd snicker, 
Thinkin' he warn't a suckemstance. Come, 

genlemun, le' 's liquor; 
An', Gin'ral, when you 've mixed the drinks 

an' chalked 'em up, tote roun' 
An' see ef ther' 's a feather-bed (thet 's 

borryable) in town. 
We '11 try ye fair, ole Grafted-Leg, an' ef 

the tar wun't stick, 
Th' ain't not a juror here but wut '11 'quit 

ye double-quick." 
To cut it short, I wun't say sweet, they gi' 

me a good dip, 
(They ain't perfessiri* Bahptists here,) then 

give the bed a rip, — 
The jury 'd sot, an' quicker thin a flash 

they hetched me out, a livin' 
Extemp'ry mammoth turkey-chick fer a 

Fejee Thanksgivin'. 
Thet I felt some stuck up is wut it 's 

nat'ral to suppose, 
When poppylar enthusiasm hed funnished 

me sech clo'es; 
(Ner 't ain't without edvantiges, this kin' 

o' suit, ye see, 
It 's water-proof, an' water 's wut I like 

kep' out o' me;) 
But nut content with thet, they took a ker- 

ridge from the fence 
An' rid me roun' to see the place, entirely 

free 'f expense, 
With f orty-'leven new kines o' sarse with- 
out no charge acquainted me, 
Gi' me three cheers, an' vowed thet I wuz 

all their fahncy painted me; 
They treated me to all their eggs; (they 

keep 'em I should think, 
Fer sech ovations, pooty long, for they 

wuz mos' distinc' ;) 
They starred me thick 'z the Milky- Way 

with indiscrim'nit cherity, 
Fer wut we call reception eggs air sunthin' 

of a rerity; 
Green ones is plentifle anough, skurce wuth 

a nigger's getherin', 
But your dead-ripe ones ranges high fer 

treatin' Nothun bretherin; 
A spotteder, ring streakeder child the* 

warn't in Uncle Sam's 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



225 



Holl farm, — a cross of striped pig an' one 

o' Jacob's lambs; 
'T wuz Dannil in the lions' den, new an' 

enlarged edition, 
An' every thin' fust-rate o' 'ts kind; the' 

warn't no impersition. 
People 's impulsiver down here than wut 

our folks to home be, 
An' kin' o' go it 'ith a resh in raisin' Hail 

Columby: 
Thet 's so : an' they swarmed out like bees, 

for your real Southun men's 
Time is n't o' much more account than an 

ole settin' hen's; 
(They jest work semioccashnally, or else 

don't work at all, 
An' so their time an' 'tention both air at 

saci'ty's call.) 
Talk about hospatality ! wut Nothun 

town d' ye know 
Would take a totle stranger up an' treat 

him gratis so ? 
You 'd better b'lieve ther' 's nothin' like 

this spendin' days an' nights 
Along 'ith a dependent race fer civerlizin' 

whites. 

But this wuz all prelim'nary ; it 's so Gran' 

Jurors here 
Fin' a true bill, a hendier way than ourn, 

an' nut so dear; 
So arter this they sentenced me, to make 

all tight 'n' snug, 
Afore a reg'lar court o' law, to ten years 

in the Jug. 
I did n't make no gret defence : you don't 

feel much like speakin', 
When, ef you let your clamshells gape, a 

quart o' tar will leak in: 
I hev hearn tell o' winged words, but pint 

o' fact it tethers 
The spoutin' gift to hev your words tu thick 

sot on with feathers, 
An' Choate ner Webster would n't ha' 

made an A 1 kin' o' speech 
Astride a Southun chestnut horse sharper 

'n a baby's screech. 
Two year ago they ketched the thief, 'n' 

seein' I wuz innercent, 
They jest uncorked an' le' me run, an' in 

my stid the sinner sent 
To see how he liked pork 'n' pone flavored 

with wa'nut saplin', 
An' nary social priv'ledge but a one-hoss, 

starn-wheel chaplin. 



When I come out, the folks behaved mos' 

gen'manly an' harnsome; 
They 'lowed it would n't be more 'n right, 

ef I should cuss 'n' darn some: 
The Cunnle he apolergized; suz he, "I'll 

du wut 's right, 
I '11 give ye settisf ection now by shootin' 

ye at sight, 
An' give the nigger (when he 's caught), to 

pay him fer his trickin' 
In gittin' the wrong man took up, a most 

H fired lickin', — 
It 's jest the way with all on 'em, the in- 
consistent critters, 
They 're 'most enough to make a man blas- 
pheme his mornin' bitters; 
I '11 be your f rien' thru thick an' thin an' 

in all kines o' weathers, 
An' all you '11 hev to pay fer 's jest the 

waste o' tar an' feathers: 
A lady owned the bed, ye see, a widder, tu, 

Miss Shennon; 
It wuz her mite ; we would ha' took another, 

ef ther 'd ben one: 
We don't make no charge for the ride an' 

all the other fixins. 
Le' 's liquor; Gin'ral, you can chalk our 

friend for all the mixins." 
A meetin' then wuz called, where they 

" Resolved, Thet we respec' 
B. S. Esquire for quallerties o' heart an' 

intellec' 
Peculiar to Columby's sile, an' not to no 

one else's, 
Thet makes Eurdpean tyrans scringe in all 

their gilded pel'ces, 
An' doos gret honor to our race an' 

Southun institootions : " 
(I give ye jest the substance o' the leadin' 

resolootions :) 
" Resolved, Thet we revere in him a 

soger 'thout a flor, 
A martyr to the princerples o' libbaty an' 

lor : 
Resolved, Thet other nations all, ef sot 

'longside o' us, 
For vartoo, larnin', chivverlry, ain't noways 

wuth a cuss." 
They gut up a subscription, tu, but no gret 

come o' thet; 
I 'xpect in cairin' of it roun' they took a 

leaky hat; 
Though Southun genelmun ain't slow at 

puttin' down their name, 



226 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



(When they can write,) fer in the eend it 

conies to jes' the same, 
Because, ye see, 't 's the fashion here to 

sign an' not to think 
A critter 'd be so sordid ez to ax 'em for 

the chink: 
I did n't call but jest on one, an' Tie drawed 

tooth-pick on me, 
An' reckoned he warn't goin' to stan' no 

sech dog-gauned econ'my; 
So nothin' more wuz realized, 'ceptin' the 

good-will shown, 
Than ef 't had ben from fust to last a regu- 
lar Cotton Loan. 
It 's a good way, though, come to think, 

coz ye enjy the sense 
O' lendin' lib'rally to the Lord, an' nary 

red o' 'xpense : 
Sence then I 've gut my name up for a 

gin'rous-hearted man 
By jes' subscribin' right an' left on this 

high-minded plan; 
I've gin away my thousans so to every 

Southun sort 
O' missions, colleges, an' sech, ner ain't no 

poorer for 't. 

I warn't so bad off, arter all; I needn't 

hardly mention 
That Guv'ment owed me quite a pile for 

my arrears o' pension, — 
I mean the poor, weak thing we Tied : we 

run a new one now, 
Thet strings a feller with a claim up ta the 

nighes' bough, 
An' prectises the right o' man, purtects 

down-trodden debtors, 
Ner wun't hev creditors about ascrougin' 

o' their betters: 
Jeff 's gut the last idees ther' is, poscrip', 

fourteenth edition, 
He knows it takes some enterprise to run 

an oppersition; 
Ourn 's the fust thru-by-daylight train, 

with all ou'doors for deepot; 
Yourn goes so slow you 'd think 't wuz 

drawed by a las' cent'ry teapot; — 
Wal, I gut all on 't paid in gold afore our 

State seceded, 
An' done wal, for Confed'rit bonds warn't 

jest the cheese I needed: 
Nut but wut they 're ez good ez gold, but 

then it 's hard a-breakin' on 'em, 
An' ignorant folks is oilers sot an' wun't 

git used to takin' on 'em; 



They 're wuth ez much ez wut they wuz 

afore ole Mem'nger signed 'em, 
An' go off middlin' wal for drinks, when 

ther' 's a knife behind 'em; 
We du miss silver, jes' fer thet an' ridin' in 

a bus, 
Now we 've shook off the desputs thet 

wuz suckin' at our pus; 
An' it's because the South 's so rich; 't 

wuz nat'ral to expec' 
Supplies o' change wuz jes' the things we 

should n't recollec'; 
We'd ough' to ha' thought aforehan', 

though, o' thet good rule o' Crock- 
ett's, 
For 't 's tiresome cairin' cotton-bales an' 

niggers in your pockets, 
Ner 't ain't quite hendy to pass off one o' 

your six-foot Guineas 
An' git your halves an' quarters back in 

gals an' pickaninnies: 
Wal, 't ain't quite all a feller 'd ax, but 

then ther 's this to say, 
It's on'y jest among ourselves thet we 

expec' to pay; 
Our system would ha' caird us thru in any 

Bible cent'ry, 
'fore this onscripterl plan come up o' books 

by double entry; 
We go the patriarkle here out o' all sight 

an' hearin', 
For Jacob warn't a suckemstance to Jeff 

at financierin'; 
He never 'd thought o' borryin' from Esau 

like all nater 
An' then cornfiscatin' all debts to sech a 

small pertater; 
There 's p'litickle econ'my, now, combined 

'ith morril beauty 
Thet saycrifices privit eends (your in'my's, 

tu) to dooty ! 
Wy, Jeff 'd ha' gin him five an' won his 

eye-teeth 'fore he knowed it, 
An', stid o' wastin' pottage, he 'd ha' eat it 

up an' owed it. 
But I wuz goin' on to say how I come here 

to dwall ; — 
'Nough said, thet, arter lookin' roun', I 

liked the place so wal, 
Where niggers doos a double good, with us 

atop to stiddy 'em, 
By bein' proofs o' prophecy an' suckleatin' 

medium, 
Where a man 's sunthin' coz he 's white, 

an' whiskey 's cheap ez fleas, 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



227 



An' the financial pollercy jes' sooted my 

idees, 
Thet I friz down right where I wuz, mer- 

ried the Widder Shennon, 
(Her thirds wuz part in cotton-land, part 

in the curse o' Canaan,) 
An' here I be ez lively ez a chipmunk on a 

wall, 
With nothin' to feel riled about much later 

'n Eddam's fall. 

Ez fur ez human foresight goes, we made 

an even trade: 
She gut an overseer, an' I a fem'ly ready- 
made, 
The youngest on 'em 's 'mos' growed up, 

rugged an' spry ez weazles, 
So 's 't ther' 's no resk o' doctors' bills fer 

hoopin'-cough an' measles. 
Our farm 's at Turkey-Buzzard Roost, 

Little Big Boosy River, 
Wal located in all respex, — fer 't ain't the 

chills 'n' fever 
Thet makes my writin' seem to squirm; a 

Southuner 'd allow I 'd 
Some call to shake, for I 've jest hed to 

meller a new cowhide. 
Miss S. is all 'f a lady; th' ain't no better on 

Big Boosy 
Ner one with more accomplishmunts 'twixt 

here an' Tuscaloosy; 
She 's an F. F., the tallest kind, an' prouder 

'n the Gran' Turk, 
An* never hed a relative thet done a stroke 

o' work; 
Hern ain't a scrimpin' fem'ly sech ez you 

git up Down East, 
Th' ain't a growed member on 't but owes 

his thousuns et the least: 
She is some old ; but then agin ther' 's draw- 
backs in my sheer: 
Wut 's left o' me ain't more 'n enough to 

make a Brigadier: 
Wust is, thet she hez tantrums ; she 's like 

Seth Moody's gun 
(Him thet wuz nicknamed frum his limp 

Ole Dot an' Kerry One) ; 
He 'd left her loaded up a spell, an' hed to 

git her clear, 
So he onhitched, — Jeerusalem ! the middle 

o' last year 
Wuz right nex' door compared to where she 

kicked the critter tu 
(Though jest where he brought up wuz wut 

no human never knew) ; 



His brother Asaph picked her up an' tied 

her to a tree, 
An' then she kicked an hour 'n' a half afore 

she 'd let it be: 
Wal, Miss S. doos hev cuttins-up an' pourins- 

out o' vials, 
But then she hez her widder's thirds, an' 

all on us hez trials. 
My objec', though, in writin' now warn't to 

allude to sech, 
But to another suckemstance more dellykit 

to tech, — 
I want thet you should grad'lly break my 

merriage to Jerushy, 
An' there 's a heap of argymunts thet 's 

emple to indooce ye: 
Fust place, State's Prison, — wal, it 's true 

it warn't fer crime, o' course, 
But then it 's jest the same fer her in gittin' 

a disvorce; 
Nex' place, my State 's secedin' out hez 

leg'lly lef me free 
To merry any one I please, pervidin' it 's a 

she; 
Fin'lly, I never wun't come back, she need 

n't hev no fear on 't, 
But then it 's wal to fix things ©ight fer 

fear Miss S. should hear on 't; 
Lastly, I 've gut religion South, an' Rushy 

she 's a pagan 
Thet sets by th' graven imiges o' the gret 

Nothun Dagon; 
(Now I hain't seen one in six munts, for, 

sence our Treashry Loan, 
Though yaller boys is thick anough, eagles 

hez kind o' flown;) 
An' ef J wants a stronger pint than them 

thet I hev stated, 
Wy, she 's an aliun in'my now, an' I've 

been cornfiscated, — 
For sence we 've entered on th' estate o' 

the late nayshnul eagle, 
She hain't no kin' o' right but jes' wut I 

allow ez legle: 
Wut doos Secedin' mean, ef 't ain't thet 

nat'rul rights hez riz, 'n' 
Thet wut is mine 's my own, but wut 's 

another man's ain't his'n ? 

Besides, I could n't do no else ; Miss S. suz 

she to me, 
" You 've sheered my bed," [thet 's when I 

paid my interduction fee 
To Southun rites,] " an' kep' your sheer," 

[wal, I allow it sticked 



228 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



So 's 't I wuz most six weeks in jail afore I 

gut me picked,] 
"Ner never paid no demmiges; but thet 

wun't do no harm, 
Pervidin' thet you '11 ondertake to oversee 

the farm: 
(My eldes' boy he 's so took up, wut with 

the Ringtail Rangers 
An' settin' in the Jestice-Court for welcomin' 

o' strangers ; ") 
[He sot on me;'] " an' so, ef you '11 jest on- 
dertake the care 
Upon a mod'rit sellery, we '11 up an' call it 

square ; 
But ef you can't conclude," suz she, an' give 

a kin' o' grin, 
" Wy, the Gran' Jurymen, I 'xpect, '11 hev 

to set agin." 
That 's the way metters stood at fust; now 

wut wuz I to du, 
But jes' to make the best on 't an' off coat 

an' buckle tu ? 
Ther' ain't a livin' man thet finds an income 

necessarier 
Than me, — bimeby I '11 tell ye how I 

fin'lly come to merry her. 

She hed another motive, tu : I mention of it 

here 
T' encourage lads thet 's growin' up to 

study 'n' persevere, 
An' show 'em how much better 't pays to 

mind their winter-schoolin' 
Than to go off on benders 'n' sech, an' waste 

their time in foolin'; 
Ef 'twarn't for studyin' evenins, why, I 

never 'd ha' ben here 
A orn'ment o' saciety, in my approprut 

spear: 
She wanted somebody, ye see, o' taste an' 

cultivation, 
To talk along o' preachers when they stopt 

to the plantation ; 
For folks in Dixie th't read an' rite, onless 

it is by jarks, 
Is skurce ez wut they wuz among th' ori- 

genle patriarchs ; 
To fit a feller f ' wut they call the soshle 

higherarchy, 
All thet you 've gut to know is jes' beyund 

an evrage darky; 
Schoolin' 's wut they can't seem to stan', 

they 're tu consarned high-pressure, 
An' knowin' t' much might spile a boy for 

bein' a Secesher. 



We hain't no settled preachin' here, ner 

ministeril taxes ; 
The min'ster's only settlement 's the carpet- 
bag he packs his 
Razor an' soap-brush intu, with his hym- 

book an' his Bible, — 
But they du preach, I swan to man, it 's 

puf'kly indescrib'le ! 
They go it like an Ericsson's ten-hoss- 

power coleric ingine, 
An' make Ole Split-Foot winch an' squirm, 

for all he 's used to singein' ; 
Hawkins's whetstone ain't a pinch o' primin' 

to the innards 
To hearin' on 'em put free grace t' a lot o' 

tough old sinhards ! 
But I must eend this letter now : 'fore long 

I '11 send a fresh un ; 
I 've lots o' things to write about, pertick- 

lerly Seceshun : 
I 'm called off now to mission-work, to let 

a leetle law in 
To Cynthy's hide : an' so, till death, 

Yourn, 

BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN. 



MASON AND SLIDELL: 
A YANKEE IDYLL 

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC 
MONTHLY 

Jaalam, 6th Jan., 1862„ 
Gentlemen, — I was highly gratified by 
the insertion of a portion of my letter in the 
last number of your valuable and entertain- 
ing Miscellany, though in a type which 
rendered its substance inaccessible even to 
the beautiful new spectacles presented to 
me by a Committee of the Parish on New 
Year's Day. I trust that I was able to bear 
your very considerable abridgment of my 
lucubrations with a spirit becoming a Chris- 
tian. My third granddaughter, Rebekah, 
aged fourteen years, and whom I have 
trained to read slowly and with proper em- 
phasis (a practice too much neglected in 
our modern systems of education), read 
aloud to me the excellent essay upon " Old 
Age," the author of which I cannot help 
suspecting to be a young man who has 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



229 



never yet known what it was to have snow 
(canities morosd) upon his own roof. Dis- 
solve frigus, large super foco ligna reponens, 
is a rule for the young, whose wood-pile is 
yet abundant for such cheerful lenitives. 
A good life behind him is the best thing to 
keep an old man's shoulders from shiver- 
ing at every breath of sorrow or ill-fortune. 
But methinks it were easier for an old man 
to feel the disadvantages of youth than the 
advantages of age. Of these latter I reckon 
one of the chiefest to be this : that we at- 
tach a less inordinate value to our own pro- 
ductions, and, distrusting daily more and 
more our own wisdom (with the conceit 
whereof at twenty we wrap ourselves away 
from knowledge as with a garment), do 
reconcile ourselves with the wisdom of 
God. I could have wished, indeed, that 
room might have been made for the residue 
of the anecdote relating to Deacon Tink- 
ham, which would not only have gratified a 
natural curiosity on the part of the publick 
(as I have reason to know from several 
letters of inquiry already received), but 
would also, as I think, have largely in- 
creased the circulation of your Magazine in 
this town. Nihil humani alienum, there is a 
curiosity about the affairs of our neighbors 
which is not only pardonable, but even 
commendable. But I shall abide a more 
fitting season. 

As touching the following literary effort 
of Esquire Biglow, much might be profit- 
ably said on the topick of Idyllick and Pas- 
toral Poetry, and concerning the proper dis- 
tinctions to be made between them, from 
Theocritus, the inventor of the former, to 
Collins, the latest authour I know of who 
has emulated the classicks in the latter 
style. But in the time of a Civil War 
worthy a Milton to defend and a Lucan to 
sing, it may be reasonably doubted whether 
the publick, never too studious of serious 
instruction, might not consider other objects 
more deserving of present attention. Con- 
cerning the title of Idyll, which Mr. Biglow 
has adopted at my suggestion, it may not 
be improper to animadvert, that the name 
properly signifies a poem somewhat rustick 
in phrase (for, though the learned are not 
agreed as to the particular dialect employed 
by Theocritus, they are universanimous both 
as to its rusticity and its capacity of rising 
now and then to the level of more elevated 



sentiments and expressions), while it is also 
descriptive of real scenery and manners. 
Yet it must be admitted that the produc- 
tion now in question (which here and there 
bears perhaps too plainly the marks of my 
correcting hand) does partake of the nature 
of a Pastoral, inasmuch as the interlocutors 
therein are purely imaginary beings, and 
the whole is little better than Kairvov <ricias 
ovap. The plot was, as I believe, suggested 
by the " Twa Briggs " of Robert Burns, a 
Scottish poet of the last century, as that 
found its prototype in the " Mutual Com- 
plaint of Plainstanes and Causey " by Fer- 
gusson, though the metre of this latter be 
different by a foot in each verse. Perhaps 
the Two Dogs of Cervantes gave the first 
hint. I reminded my talented young pa- 
rishioner and friend that Concord Bridge 
had long since yielded to the edacious tooth 
of Time. But he answered me to this effect : 
that there was no greater mistake of an 
authour than to suppose the reader had no 
fancy of his own ; that, if once that faculty 
was to be called into activity, it were better 
to be in for the whole sheep than the shoul- 
der ; and that he knew Concord like a book, 
— an expression questionable in propriety, 
since there are few things with which he is 
not more familiar than with the printed 
page. In proof of what he affirmed, he 
showed me some verses which with others 
he had stricken out as too much delaying 
the action, but which I communicate in this 
place because they rightly define " punkin- 
seed " (which Mr. Bartlett would have a 
kind of perch, — a creature to which I have 
found a rod or pole not to be so easily 
equivalent in our inland waters as in the 
books of arithmetic), and because it con- 
veys an eulogium on the worthy son of an 
excellent father, with whose acquaintance 
(eheu, fugaces anni ! ) I was formerly hon- 
oured. 

" But nowadays the Bridge ain't wut they show, 
So much ez Em'son, Hawthorne, an' Thoreau. 
I know the village, though ; was sent there once 
A-sehoolin', 'cause to home I played the dunce ; 
An' I 've ben sence a visitin' the Jedge, 
Whose garding whispers with the river's edge, 
Where I 've sot mornin's lazy as the bream, 
Whose on'y business is to head up-stream, 
(We call 'em punkin-seed,) or else in chat 
Along 'th the Jedge, who covers with his hat 
More wit an' gumption an' shrewd Yankee sense 
Than there is mosses on an ole stone fence." 



230 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



Concerning the subject-matter of the 
verses, I have not the leisure at present 
to write so fully as I could wish, my time 
being occupied with the preparation of a 
discourse for the forthcoming bicentenary 
celebration of the first settlement of Jaa- 
lam East Parish. It may gratify the pub- 
lick interest to mention the circumstance, 
that my investigations to this end have en- 
abled me to verify the fact (of much his- 
torick importance, and hitherto hotly de- 
bated) that Shear jashub Tarbox was the 
first child of white parentage born in this 
town, being named in his father's will 
under date August 7th, or 9th, 1662. It 
is well known that those who advocate the 
claims of Mehetable Goings are unable to 
find any trace of her existence prior to Oc- 
tober of that year. As respects the settle- 
ment of the Mason and Slidell question, 
Mr. Biglow has not incorrectly stated the 
popular sentiment, so far as I can judge by 
its expression in this locality. For myself, 
I feel more sorrow than resentment: for I 
am old enough to have heard those talk of 
England who still, even after the unhappy 
estrangement, could not unschool their lips 
from calling her the Mother-Country. But 
England has insisted on ripping up old 
wounds, and has undone the healing work 
of fifty years; for nations do not reason, 
they only feel, and the spretce injuria formal 
rankles in their minds as bitterly as in that 
of a woman. And because this is so, I feel 
the more satisfaction that our Government 
has acted (as all Governments should, 
standing as they do between the people and 
their passions) as if it had arrived at years 
of discretion. There are three short and 
simple words, the hardest of all to pro- 
nounce in any language (and I suspect they 
were no easier before the confusion of 
tongues), but which no man or nation that 
cannot utter can claim to have arrived at 
manhood. Those words are, / was wrong; 
and I am proud that, while England played 
the boy, our rulers had strength enough 
from the People below and wisdom enough 
from God above to quit themselves like 
men. 

The sore points on both sides have been 
skilfully exasperated by interested and un- 
scrupulous persons, who saw in a war be- 
tween the two countries the only hope of 
profitable return for their investment in 



Confederate stock, whether political or 
financial. The always supercilious, often 
insulting, and sometimes even brutal tone 
of British journals and publick men has 
certainly not tended to soothe whatever 
resentment might exist in America. 

"Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love, 
But why did you kick me down stairs ? " 

We have no reason to complain that 
England, as a necessary consequence of her 
clubs, has become a great society for the 
minding of other people's business, and we 
can smile good-naturedly when she lectures 
other nations on the sins of arrogance and 
conceit; but we may justly consider it a 
breach of the political convenances which 
are expected to regulate the intercourse of 
one well-bred government with another, 
when men holding places in the ministry 
allow themselves to dictate our domestic 
policy, to instruct us in our duty, and to 
stigmatize as unholy a war for the rescue 
of whatever a high-minded people should 
hold most vital and most sacred. Was 
it in good taste, that I may use the mild- 
est term, for Earl Russell to expound our 
own Constitution to President Lincoln, or 
to make a new and fallacious application of 
an old phrase for our benefit, and tell us 
that the Rebels were fighting for indepen- 
dence and we for empire ? As if all wars 
for independence were by nature just and 
deserving of sympathy, and all wars for 
empire ignoble and worthy only of repro- 
bation, or as if these easy phrases in any 
way characterized this terrible struggle, 
— terrible not so truly in any superficial 
sense, as from the essential and deadly 
enmity of the principles that underlie it. 
His Lordship's bit of borrowed rhetoric 
would justify Smith O'Brien, Nana Sahib, 
and the Maori chieftains, while it would 
condemn nearly every war in which Eng- 
land has ever been engaged. Was it so 
very presumptuous in us to think that it 
would be decorous in English statesmen if 
they spared time enough to acquire some 
kind of knowledge, though of the most ele- 
mentary kind, in regard to this country 
and the questions at issue here, before they 
pronounced so off-hand a judgment ? Or 
is political information expected to come 
Dogberry-fashion in England, like reading 
and writing, by nature ? 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



231 



And now all respectable England is Won- 
dering at our irritability, and sees a quite 
satisfactory explanation of it in our na- 
tional vanity. Suave mari magno, it is pleas- 
ant, sitting in the easy-chairs of Downing 
Street, to sprinkle pepper on the raw 
wounds of a kindred people struggling for 
life, and philosophical to find in self-conceit 
the cause of our instinctive resentment. 
Surely we were of all nations the least liable 
to any temptation of vanity at a time when 
the gravest anxiety and the keenest sor- 
row were never absent from our hearts. 
Nor is conceit the exclusive attribute of any 
one nation. The earliest of English travel- 
lers, Sir John Mandeville, took a less pro- 
vincial view of the matter when he said, 
" For fro what partie of the erthe that men 
duellen, other aboven or beneathen, it sem- 
ethe alweys to hem that duellen that thei 
gon more righte than any other folke." 
The English have always had their fair 
share of this amiable quality. We may 
say of them still, as the authour of the 
" Lettres Cabalistiques " said of them more 
than a century ago, " Ces derniers disent 
naturellement qu'il n'y a qu'eux qui soient esti- 
mables." And, as he also says, " J'aimerois 
presque autant tomber entre les mains d'un 
Inquisiteur que d'un Anglois qui me fait sentir 
sans cesse combien il s'estime plus que moi, 
et qui ne daigne me parler que pour injurier 
ma Nation et pour m'ennuyer du recit des 
grandes qualites de la sienne." Of this Bull 
we may safely say with Horace, habetfcenum 
in cornu. What we felt to be especially in- 
sulting was the quiet assumption that the 
descendants of men who left the Old World 
for the sake of principle, and who had made 
the wilderness into a New World patterned 
after an Idea, could not possibly be suscep- 
tible of a generous or lofty sentiment, could 
have no feeling of nationality deeper than 
that of a tradesman for his shop. One 
would have thought, in listening to Eng- 
land, that we were presumptuous in fancy- 
ing that we were a nation at all, or had any 
other principle of union than that of booths 
at a fair, where there is no higher notion 
of government than the constable, or better 
image of God than that stamped upon the 
current coin. 

It is time for Englishmen to consider 
whether there was nothing in the spirit of 
their press and of their leading public men 



calculated to rouse a just indignation, and 
to cause a permanent estrangement on the 
part of any nation capable of self-respect, 
and sensitively jealous, as ours then was, of 
foreign interference. Was there nothing in 
the indecent haste with which belligerent 
rights were conceded to the Rebels, nothing 
in the abrupt tone assumed in the Trent 
case, nothing in the fitting out of Confeder- 
ate privateers, that might stir the blood of 
a people already overcharged with doubt, 
suspicion, and terrible responsibility ? The 
laity in any country do not stop to consider 
points of law, but they have an instinctive 
perception of the animus that actuates the 
policy of a foreign nation ; and in our own 
case they remembered that the British 
authorities in Canada did not wait till di- 
plomacy could send home to England for 
her slow official tinder-box to fire the "Car- 
oline." Add to this, what every sensible 
American knew, that the moral support of 
England was equal to an army of two hun- 
dred thousand men to the Rebels, while it 
insured us another year or two of exhaust- 
ing war. It was not so much the spite of 
her words (though the time might have 
been more tastefully chosen) as the actual 
power for evil in them that we felt as a 
deadly wrong. Perhaps the most imme- 
diate and efficient cause of mere irritation 
was the sudden and unaccountable change 
of manner on the other side of the water. 
Only six months before, the Prince of Wales 
had come over to call us cousins ; and every- 
where it was nothing but " our American 
brethren," that great offshoot of British 
institutions in the New World, so almost 
identical with them in laws, language, and 
literature, — this last of the alliterative 
compliments being so bitterly true, that 
perhaps it will not be retracted even now. 
To this outburst of long-repressed affection 
we responded with genuine warmth, if with 
something of the awkwardness of a poor 
relation bewildered with the sudden tighten- 
ing of the ties of consanguinity when it is 
rumored that he has come into a large 
estate. Then came the Rebellion, and, 
presto ! a flaw in our titles was discovered, 
the plate we were promised at the family 
table is flung at our head, and we were again 
the scum of creation, intolerably vulgar, at 
once cowardly and overbearing, — no rela- 
tions of theirs, after all, but a dreggy hy- 



232 



[E BIGLOW PAPERS 



brid of the basest bk i. PanWge 

was not quicker t John his 

former friend. I c linking of 

Walter Mapes's jiii£ ase of Pe- 
tronius, — 

.*' Dummodo sim splen irnatus, 

Et multa familia sin s, 

Prudens sum et sapit^ cu xnorigeratus, 
Et tuus nepos sum et tu meus cognatus," — 

which I may freely render thus: — 

So long as I was prosperous, I 'd dinners by the 

dozen, 
Was well-bred, witty, virtuous, and everybody's 

cousin ; 
If luck should turn, as well she may, her fancy 

is so flexile, 
Will virtue, eousinship, and all return with her 

from exile ? 

There was nothing in all this to exasper- 
ate a philosopher, much to make him smile 
rather; but the earth's surface is not chiefly 
inhabited by philosophers, and I revive the 
recollection of it now in perfect good-hu- 
mour, merely by way of suggesting to our 
ci-devant British cousins, that it would have 
been easier for them to hold their tongues 
than for us to keep our tempers under the 
circumstances. 

The English Cabinet made a blunder, 
unquestionably, in taking it so hastily for 
granted that the United States had fallen for- 
ever from their position as a first-rate power, 
and it was natural that they should vent a 
little of their vexation on the people whose 
inexplicable obstinacy in maintaining free- 
dom and order, and in resisting degradation, 
was likely to convict them of their mistake. 
But if bearing a grudge be the sure mark 
of a small mind in the individual, can it be 
a proof of high spirit in a nation ? If the 
result of the present estrangement between 
the two countries shall be to make us more 
independent of British twaddle (Indomito 
nee dira ferens stipendia Tauro), so much 
the better; but if it is to make us insensible 
to the value of British opinion in matters 
where it gives us the judgment of an im- 
partial and cultivated outsider, if we are to 
shut ourselves out from the advantages of 
English culture, the loss will be ours, and 
not theirs. Because the door of the old 
homestead has been once slammed in our 
faces, shall we in a huff reject all future 
advances of conciliation, and cut ourselves 
foolishly off from any share in the human- 



izing influences of the place, with its in- 
effable riches of association, its heirlooms 
of immemorial culture, its historic monu- 
ments, ours no less than theirs, its noble 
gallery of ancestral portraits ? We have 
only to succeed, and England will not only 
respect, but, for the first time, begin to 
understand us. And let us not, in our jus- 
tifiable indignation at wanton insult, forget 
that England is not the England only of 
snobs who dread the democracy they do not 
comprehend, but the England of history, of 
heroes, statesmen, and poets, whose names 
are dear, and their influence as salutary to 
us as to her. 

Let us strengthen the hands of those 
in authority over us, and curb our own 
tongues, remembering that General Wait 
commonly proves in the end more than a 
match for General Headlong, and that the 
Good Book ascribes safety to a multitude, 
indeed, but not to a mob, of counsellours. 
Let us remember and perpend the words 
of Paulus Emilius to the people of Borne ; 
that, "if they judged they could manage 
the war to more advantage by any other, 
he would willingly yield up his charge ; 
but if they confided in him, they were not to 
make themselves his colleagues in his office, or 
raise reports, or criticise his actions, but, with- 
out talking, supply him with means and assist- 
ance necessary to the carrying on of the war ; 
for, if they proposed to command their own 
commander, they would render this expedition 
more ridiculous than the former." (Vide 
Plutarchum in Vita P. E.) Let us also not 
forget what the same excellent authour 
says concerning Perseus's fear of spending 
money, and not permit the covetousness of 
Brother Jonathan to be the good fortune 
of Jefferson Davis. For my own part, till 
I am ready to admit the Commander-in- 
Chief to my pulpit, I shall abstain from 
planning his battles. If courage be the 
sword, yet is patience the armour of a 
nation ; and in our desire for peace, let us 
never be willing to surrender the Constitu- 
tion bequeathed us by fathers at least as 
wise as ourselves (even with Jefferson Davis 
to help us), and, with those degenerate 
Romans, tuta et pr essentia quam Vetera et 
periculosa malle. 

And not only should we bridle our own 
tongues, but the pens of others, which are 
swift to convey useful intelligence to the 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



233 



enemy. This is no new inconvenience ; for, 
under date, 3d June, 1745, General Pep- 
perell wrote thus to Governor Shirley from 
Louisbourg : " What your Excellency ob- 
serves of the army's being made acquainted 
with any plans proposed, until ready to be 
put in execution, has always been disagree- 
able to me, and I have given many cautions 
relating to it. But when your Excellency 
considers that our Council of War consists 
of more than twenty members, I am persuaded 
you will think it impossible for me to hinder 
it, if any of them will persist in communi- 
cating to inferior officers and soldiers what 
ought to be kept secret. I am informed 
that the Boston newspapers are filled with 
paragraphs from private letters relating to 
the expedition. Will your Excellency per- 
mit me to say I think it may be of ill con- 
sequence ? Would it not be convenient, if 
your Excellency should forbid the Printers' 
inserting such news ? " Verily, if tempora 
mutantur, we may question the et nos mu- 
tamur in illis • and if tongues be leaky, it 
will need all hands at the pumps to save 
the Ship of State. Our history dotes and 
repeats itself. If Sassycus (rather than 
Alcibiades) find a parallel in Beauregard, 
so Weakwash, as he is called by the brave 
Lieutenant Lion Gardiner, need not seek 
far among our own Sachems for his anti- 
type. 

With respect, 

Your ob* humble serv*, 

Homer Wilbur, A. M. 

I LOVE to start out arter night 's begun, 
An' all the chores about the farm are done, 
The critters milked an' foddered, gates 

shet fast, 
Tools cleaned aginst to-morrer, supper 

past, 
An' Nancy darnin' by her ker'sene lamp, — 
I love, I say, to start upon a tramp, 
To shake the kinkles out o' back an' legs, 
An' kind o' rack my life off from the dregs 
Thet 's apt to settle in the buttery-hutch 
Of folks thet f oiler in one rut too much : 
Hard work is good an' wholesome, past all 

doubt ; 
But 't ain't so, ef the mind gits tuckered 

out. 
Now, bein' born in Middlesex, you know, 
There 's certin spots where I like best to 

go: 



The Concord road, for instance (I, for 

one, 
Most gin'lly oilers call it John Bull's Run), 
The field o' Lexin'ton where England tried 
The fastest colours thet she ever dyed, 
An' Concord Bridge, thet Davis, when he 

came, 
Found was the bee-line track to heaven an' 

fame, 
Ez all roads be by natur', ef your soul 
Don't sneak thru shun-pikes so 's to save 

the toll. 

They 're 'most too fur away, take too much 

time 
To visit of'en, ef it ain't in rhyme ; 
But the' 's a walk thet 's hendier, a sight, 
An' suits me fust-rate of a winter's night, — 
I mean the round whale's-back o' Prospect 

Hill. 
I love to l'iter there while night grows 

still, 
An' in the twinklin' villages about, 
Fust here, then there, the well-saved lights 

goes out, 
An' nary sound but watch - dogs' false 

alarms, 
Or muffled cock-crows from the drowsy 

farms, 
Where some wise rooster (men act jest 

thet way) 
Stands to 't thet moon-rise is the break o' 

day: 
(So Mister Seward sticks a three-months* 

pin 
Where the war 'd oughto eend, then tries 

agin ; 
My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 't is to 

crow : 
Don't never prophesy — onless ye know.) 
I love to muse there till it kind o' seems 
Ez ef the world went eddyin' off in dreams ; 
The northwest wind thet twitches at my 

baird 
Blows out o' sturdier days not easy scared, 
An' the same moon thet this December 

shines 
Starts out the tents an' booths o' Putnam's 

lines ; 
The rail-fence posts, acrost the hill thet 

runs, 
Turn ghosts o' sogers should'rin' ghosts o' 

guns ; 
Ez wheels the sentry, glints a flash o' light, 
Along the firelock won at Concord Fight, 



234 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



An', 'twixt the silences, now fur, now nigh, 
Rings the sharp chellenge, hums the low 
reply. 

Ez I was settin' so, it warn't long sence, 
Mixin' the puffict with the present tense, 
I heerd two voices som'ers in the air, 
Though, ef I was to die, I can't tell where: 
Voices I call 'em: 't was a kind o' sough 
Like pine-trees thet the wind 's ageth'rin' 

through ; 
An', fact, I thought it was the wind a spell, 
Then some misdoubted, could n't fairly tell, 
Fust sure, then not, jest as you hold an eel, 
I knowed, an' did n't, — fin'lly seemed to 

feel 
'T was Concord Bridge a talkin' off to kill 
With the Stone Spike thet 's druv thru 

Bunker's Hill ; 
Whether 't was so, or ef I on'y dreamed, 
I could n't say; I tell it ez it seemed. 

THE BRIDGE 

Wal, neighbor, tell us wut 's turned up 
thet 's new ? 

You 're younger 'n I be, — nigher Bos- 
ton, tu : 

An' down to Boston, ef you take their 
showin', 

Wut they don't know ain't hardly wuth 
the knowin'. 

There 's sunthirf goin' on, I know : las' 
night 

The British sogers killed in our gret fight 

(Nigh fifty year they hedn't stirred nor 
spoke) 

Made sech a coil you 'd thought a dam hed 
broke : 

Why, one he up an' beat a revellee 

With his own crossbones on a holler tree, 

Till all the graveyards swarmed out like a 
hive 

With faces I hain't seen sence Seventy- 
five. 

Wut is the news ? 'T ain't good, or they 'd 
be cheerin'. 

Speak slow an' clear, for I 'm some hard o' 
hearin'. 

THE MONIMENT 

I don't know hardly ef it 's good or bad, — 

THE BRIDGE 

At wust, it can't be wus than wut we 've 
had. 



THE MONIMENT 

You know them envys thet the Rebbles 

sent, 
An' Cap'n Wilkes he borried o' the Trent ? 

THE BRIDGE 

Wut ! they ha'n't hanged 'em ? Then their 

wits is gone ! 
Thet 's the sure way to make a goose a 

swan ! 

THE MONIMENT 

No : England she would hev 'em, Fee, Faw, 

Fum ! 
(Ez though she hed n't fools enough to 

home,) 
So they 've returned 'em — 

THE BRIDGE 

Hev they ? Wal, by heaven, 
Thet 's the wust news I 've heerd sence 

Seventy-seven ! 
By George, I meant to say, though I de- 
clare 
It 's 'most enough to make a deacon swear. 

THE MONIMENT 

Now don't go off half-cock : folks never 



By usin' pepper-sarse instid o' brains. 
Come, neighbor, you don't understan' - 



THE BRIDGE 

How ? Hey ? 

Not understan' ? Why, wut 's to hender, 

pray ? 
Must I go huntin' round to find a chap 
To tell me when my face hez hed a slap ? 

THE MONIMENT 

See here : the British they found out a 

flaw 
In Cap'n Wilkes's readin' o' the law : 
(They make all laws, you know, an' so, o' 

course, 
It's nateral they should understan' their 

force :) 
He 'd oughto ha' took the vessel into port, 
An' hed her sot on by a reg'lar court ; 
She was a mail-ship, an' a steamer, tu, 
An' thet, they say, hez changed the pint o' 

view, 
Coz the old practice, bein' meant for sails, 
Ef tried upon a steamer, kind o' fails ; 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



235 



You may take out despatches, but you 

mus' n't 
Take nary man — 

THE BRIDGE 

You mean to say, you dus' n't ! 
Changed pint o' view ! No, no, — it 's 

overboard 
With law an' gospel, when their ox is 

gored ! 
I tell ye, England's law, on sea an' land, 
Hez oilers ben, " I *ve gut the heaviest hand." 
Take nary man ? Fine preachin' from her 

lips ! 
Why, she hez taken hunderds from our 



An' would agin, an' swear she had a right to, 
Ef we warn't strong enough to be per- 

lite to. 
Of all the sarse thet I can call to mind, 
England doos make the most onpleasant 

kind : 
It 's you 're the sinner oilers, she 's the 

saint ; 
Wut 's good 's all English, all thet is n't 

ain't ; 
Wut profits her is oilers right an' just, 
An' ef you don't read Scriptur so, you 

must ; 
She 's praised herself ontil she fairly thinks 
There ain't no light in Natur when she 

winks ; 
Hain't she the Ten Comman'ments in her 

pus ? 
Could the world stir 'thout she went, tu, 

ez nus ? 
She ain't like other mortals, thet 's a fact : 
She never stopped the habus-corpus act, 
Nor specie payments, nor she never yet 
Cut down the int'rest on her public debt ; 
She don't put down rebellions, lets 'em 

breed, 
An' 's oilers willin' Ireland should secede ; 
She 's all thet 's honest, honnable, an' fair, 
An' when the vartoos died they made her 

heir. 

THE MONIMENT 

Wal, wal, two wrongs don't never make a 

right ; 
Ef we 're mistaken, own up, an' don't 

fight: 
For gracious' sake, ha'n't we enough to du 
'thout gettih' up a fight with England, tu ? 
She thinks we 're rabble-rid — 



THE BRIDGE 

An' so we can't 
Distinguish 'twixt You oughtn't an' You 

sha'n't ! 
She jedges by herself ; she 's no idear 
How 't stiddies folks to give 'em their fair 

sheer : 
The odds 'twixt her an' us is plain 's a 

steeple, — 
Her People 's turned to Mob, our Mob 's 

turned People. 

THE MONIMENT 

She 's riled jes' now — 

THE BRIDGE 

Plain proof her cause ain't strong, — 
The one thet fust gits mad 's 'most oilers 

wrong. 
Why, sence she helped in lickin' Nap the 

Fust, 
An' pricked a bubble jest agoin' to bust, 
With Rooshy, Prooshy, Austry, all assist- 
in', 
Th' ain't nut a face but wut she 's shook her 

fist in, 
Ez though she done it all, an' ten times 

more, 
An' nothin' never hed gut done afore, 
Nor never could agin, 'thout she wuz spliced 
On to one eend an' gin th' old airth a hoist. 
She is some punkins, thet I wun't deny, 
(For ain't she some related to you 'n' I ?) 
But there 's a few small intrists here be- 
low 
Outside the counter o' John Bull an' Co, 
An' though they can't conceit how 't should 

be so, 
I guess the Lord druv down Creation's 

spiles 
'thout no gret helpin' from the British Isles, 
An' could contrive to keep things pooty 

stiff 
Ef they withdrawed from business in a 

miff; 
I ha'n't no patience with sech swellin' fel- 
lers ez 
Think God can't forge 'thout them to blow 
the bellerses. 

THE MONIMENT 

You 're oilers quick to set your back aridge, 
Though 't suits a tom-cat more 'n a sober 
bridge : 



236 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



Don't you git het : they thought the thing 
was planned ; 

They '11 cool off when they come to under- 
stand. 

THE BRIDGE 

Ef thet 's wut you expect, you '11 hev to wait ; 
Folks never understand the folks they hate : 
She '11 fin' some other grievance jest ez good, 
'fore the month 's out, to git misunderstood. 
England cool off ! She '11 do it, ef she sees 
She 's run her head into a swarm o' bees. 
I ain't so prejudiced ez wut you spose : 
I hev thought England was the best thet 

goes ; 
Remember (no, you can't), when I was 

reared, 
God save the King was all the tune you 

heerd : 
But it 's enough to turn Wachuset roun' 
This stumpin' fellers when you think 

they 're down. 

THE MONIMENT 

But, neighbor, ef they prove their claim at 

law, 
The best way is to settle, an' not jaw. 
An' don't le' 's mutter 'bout the awfle bricks 
"We '11 give 'em, ef we ketch 'em in a fix : 
That 'ere 's most frequently the kin' o' talk 
Of critters can't be kicked to toe the chalk; 
Your " You 11 see nex' time ! " an' " Look 

out bumby ! " 
'Most oilers ends in eatin' umble-pie. 
'T wun't pay to scringe to England : will it 

pay 

To fear thet meaner bully, old " They '11 

say"? 
Suppose they du say : words are dreffie 

bores, 
But they ain't quite so bad ez seventy-fours. 
"Wut England wants is jest a wedge to fit 
Where it '11 help to widen out our split : 
She 's found her wedge, an' 't ain't for us to 

come 
An' lend the beetle thet 's to drive it home. 
For growed-up folks like us 't would be a 

scandle, 
When we git sarsed, to fly right off the 

handle. 
England ain't all bad, coz she thinks us 

blind : 
Ef she can't change her skin, she can her 

mind ; 
An' we shall see her change it double-quick, 



Soon ez we 've proved thet we 're a-goin' to 

lick. 
She an' Columby 's gut to be fas' friends : 
For the world prospers by their privit ends : 
'T would put the clock back all o' fifty years 
Ef they should fall together by the ears. 

THE BRIDGE 

I 'gree to thet ; she 's nigh us to wut 

France is ; 
But then she '11 hev to make the fust ad- 
vances ; 
We 've gut pride, tu, an' gut it by good 

rights, 
An' ketch me stoopin' to pick up the mites 
O' condescension she '11 be lettin' fall 
When she finds out we ain't dead arter all ! 
I tell ye wut, it takes more 'n one good week 
Afore my nose forgits it 's hed a tweak. 

THE MONIMENT 

She '11 come out right bumby, thet I '11 

engage, 
Soon ez she gits to seein' we 're of age ; 
This talkin' down o' hers ain't wuth a fuss ; 
It 's nat'ral ez nut likin' 't is to us ; 
Ef we 're agoin' to prove we be growed-up, 
'T wun't be by barkin' like a tarrier pup, 
But turnin' to an' makin' things ez good 
Ez wut we 're oilers braggin' that we could; 
We 're boun' to be good friends, an' so 

we 'd oughto, 
In spite of all the fools both sides the water. 

THE BRIDGE 

I b'lieve thet 's so ; but hearken in your 

ear, — 
I 'm older 'n you, — Peace wun't keep house 

with Fear : 
Ef you want peace, the thing you 've gut tu 

du 
Is jes' to show you 're up to fightin', tu. 
/ recollect how sailors' rights was won, 
Yard locked in yard, hot gun-lip kissin' 

gun : 
Why, afore thet, John Bull sot up thet he 
Hed gut a kind o' mortgage on the sea; 
You 'd thought he held by Gran'ther 

Adam's will, 
An' ef you knuckle down, he '11 think so still. 
Better thet all our ships an' all their crews 
Should sink to rot in ocean's dreamless ooze, 
Each torn flag wavin' chellenge ez it went, 
An' each dumb gun a brave man's moni- 

ment, 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



2 37 



Than seek sech peace ez only cowards 

crave : 
Give me the peace of dead men or of brave ! 

THE MONIMENT 

I say, ole boy, it ain't the Glorious Fourth: 
You 'd oughto larned 'fore this wut talk wuz 

worth. 
It ain't our nose thet gits put out o' jint; 
It 's England thet gives up her dearest pint. 
We 've gut, I tell ye now, enough to du 
In our own fem'ly fight, afore we 're thru. 
I hoped, las' spring, jest arter Sumter's 

shame, 
When every flag-staff flapped its tethered 

flame, 
An' all the people, startled from their 

doubt, 
Come must'rin' to the flag with sech a 

shout, — 
I hoped to see things settled 'fore this fall, 
The Rebbles licked, Jeff Davis hanged, an' 

all; f 

Then come Bull Run, an' sence then I 've 

ben waitin' 
Like boys in Jennooary thaw for skatin', 
Nothin' to du but watch my shadder's trace 
Swing, like a ship at anchor, roun' my base, 
With daylight's flood an' ebb: it 's gittin' 

slow, 
An' I 'most think we 'd better let 'em go. 
I tell ye wut, this war 's a-goin' to cost — 

THE BRIDGE 

An' I tell you it wun't be money lost; 
Taxes milks dry, but, neighbor, you '11 allow 
Thet havin' things onsettled kills the cow: 
We 've gut to fix this thing for good an' all ; 
It 's no use buildin' wut 's a-goin' to fall. 
I 'm older 'n you, an' I 've seen things an' 

men, 
An' my experunce, — tell ye wut it 's ben: 
Folks thet worked thorough was the ones 

thet thriv, 
But bad work f oilers ye ez long 's ye live; 
You can't git red on 't; jest ez sure ez sin, 
It 's oilers askin' to be done agin: 
Ef we should part, it would n't be a week 
'Fore your sof t-soddered peace would spring 

aleak. 
We 've turned our cuffs up, but, to put her 

thru, 
We must git mad an' off with jackets, tu ; 
'T wun't du to think thet killin' ain't per- 

lite, — 



You 've gut to be in airnest, ef you fight; 
Why, two thirds o' the Rebbles 'ould cut 

dirt, 
Ef they once thought thet Guv'ment meant 

to hurt; 
An' I du wish our Gin'rals hed in mind 
The folks in front more than the folks be- 
hind; 
You wun't do much ontil you think it 's God, 
An' not constitoounts, thet holds the rod; 
We want some more o' Gideon's sword, I 

jedge, 
For proclamations ha'n't no gret of edge; 
There 's nothin' for a cancer but the knife, 
Onless you set by 't more than by your life. 
/ 've seen hard times ; I see a war begun 
Thet folks thet love their bellies never 'd 

won; 
Pharo's lean kine hung on for seven long 

year; 
But when 't was done, we did n't count it 

dear; 
Why, law an' order, honor, civil right, 
Ef they ain't wuth it, wut is wuth a fight ? 
I 'm older 'n you: the plough, the axe, the 

mill, 
All kin's o' labor an' all kin's o' skill, 
Would be a rabbit in a wile-cat's claw, 
Ef 't warn't for thet slow critter, 'stablished 

law; 
Onsettle thet, an' all the world goes whiz, 
A screw 's gut loose in everythin' there is : 
Good buttresses once settled, don't you fret 
An' stir 'em; take a bridge's word for thet! 
Young folks are smart, but all ain't good 

thet's new; 
I guess the gran'thers they knowed sunthin', 

tu. 

THE MONIMENT 

Amen to thet! build sure in the beginnin' : 
An' then don't never tech the underpinnin' : 
Th' older a guv'ment is, the better 't suits; 
New ones hunt folks's corns out like new 

boots : 
Change jes' for change, is like them big 

hotels 
Where they shift plates, an' let ye live on 

smells. 

THE BRIDGE 

Wal, don't give up afore the ship goes 

down : 
It 's a stiff gale, but Providence wun't 

drown; 



2 3 8 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



An' God wun't leave us yit to sink or swirn, 
Ef we don't fail to du wut 's right by Him. 
This land o' ourn, I tell ye, 's gut to be 
A better country than man ever see. 
I feel my sperit swellin' with a cry 
Thet seems to say, " Break forth an' pro- 
phesy! " 

strange New World, thet yit wast never 

young, 
Whose youth from thee by gripin' need was 

wrung, 
Brown foundlin' o' the woods, whose baby- 
bed 
Was prowled roun' by the Injun's cracklin' 

tread, 
An' who grew'st strong thru shifts an' wants 

an' pains, 
Nussed by stern men with empires in their 

brains, 
Who saw in vision their young Ishmel strain 
With each hard hand a vassal ocean's mane, 
Thou, skilled by Freedom an' by gret events 
To pitch new States ez Old- World men 

pitch tents, 
Thou, taught by Fate to know Jehovah's 

plan 
Thet man's devices can't unmake a man, 
An' whose free latch -string never was 

drawed in 
Against the poorest child of Adam's kin, — 
The grave 's not dug where traitor hands 

shall lay 
In fearful haste thy murdered corse away! 

1 see — 

Jest here some dogs begun to bark, 
So thet I lost old Concord's last remark: 
I listened long, but all I seemed to hear 
Was dead leaves gossipin' on some birch- 
trees near; 
But ez they hed n't no gret things to say, 
An' sed 'em often, I come right away, 
An', walkin' home'ards, jest to pass the 

time, 
I put some thoughts thet bothered me in 

rhyme; 
I hain't hed time to fairly try 'em on, 
But here they be — it 's 

JONATHAN TO JOHN 

It don't seem hardly right, John, 
When both my hands was full, 

To stump me to a fight, John, — 
Your cousin, tu, John Bull! 



Ole Uncle S. sez he, " I guess 
We know it now," sez he, 
" The lion's paw is all the law, 
Accordin' to J. B., 
Thet 's fit for you an' me! " 

You wonder why we 're hot, John ? 

Your mark wuz on the guns, 
The neutral guns, thet shot, John, 
Our brothers an' our sons : 
Ole Uncle S. sez he, "I guess 
There 's human blood," sez he, 
" By fits an' starts, in Yankee hearts, 
Though 't may surprise J. B. 
More 'n it would you an' me." 

Ef 1 turned mad dogs loose, John, 

On your front-parlor stairs, 
Would it jest meet your views, John, 
To wait an' sue their heirs ? 
Ole Uncle S. sez he, " I guess, 
I on'y guess," sez he, 
" Thet ef Vattel on Autoes fell, 
'T would kind o' rile J. B., 
Ez wal ez you an' me ! " 

Who made the law thet hurts, John, 

Heads 1 win, — ditto tails ? 
"J. B." was on his shirts, John, 
Onless my memory fails. 

Ole Uncle S. sez he, " I guess 
(I 'm good at thet)," sez he, 
" Thet sauce for goose ain't jest the juice 
For ganders with J. B., 
No more 'n with you or me ! " 

When your rights was our wrongs, John, 

You did n't stop for fuss, — 
Britanny's trident prongs, John, 
Was good 'nough law for us. 
Ole Uncle S. sez he, " I guess, 
Though physic 's good," sez he, 
" It does n't roller thet he can swaller 
Prescriptions signed ' J. B./ 
Put up by you an' me ! " 

We own the ocean, tu, John : 

You mus' n' take it hard, 
Ef we can't think with you, John, 
It 's jest your own back-yard. 
Ole Uncle S. sez he, " I guess, 
Ef thet 's his claim," sez he, 
" The fencin'-stuff '11 cost enough 
To bust up friend J. B., 
Ez wal ez you an' me ! " 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



2 39 



Why talk so dreffle big, John, 

Of honor when it meant 

You did n't care a fig, John, 

But jest for ten per cent ? 

Ole Uncle S. sez he, "I guess 
He 's like the rest," sez he : 
" When all is done, it 's number one 
Thet 's nearest to J. B., 
Ez wal ez t' you an' me ! " 

We give the critters back, John, 

Cos Abram thought 't was right ; 
It warn't your bullyin' clack, John, 
Pro vo kin' us to fight. 

Ole Uncle S. sez he, " I guess 
We 've a hard row," sez he, 
" To hoe jest now ; but thet, somehow, 
May happen to J. B., 
Ez wal ez you an' me ! " 

We ain't so weak an' poor, John, 

With twenty million people, 
An' close to every door, John, 
A school-house an' a steeple. 
Ole Uncle S. sez he, " I guess, 
It is a fact," sez he, 
" The surest plan to make a Man 
Is, think him so, J. B., 
Ez much' ez you or me ! " 

Our folks believe in Law, John ; 

An' it 's for her sake, now, 
They 've left the axe an' saw, John, 
The anvil an' the plough. 

Ole Uncle S. sez he, " I guess, 
Ef 't warn't for law," sez he, 
" There 'd be one shindy from here to 
Indy ; 
An' thet don't suit J. B. 
(When 't ain't 'twixt you an' me !) " 

We know we 've got a cause, John, 

Thet 's honest, just, an' true ; 
We thought 't would win applause, John, 
Ef nowheres else, from you. 
Ole Uncle S. sez he, " I guess 
His love of right," sez he, 
| Hangs by a rotten fibre o' cotton : 
There 's natur' in J. B., 
Ez wal 'z in you an' me ! " 

The South says, "Poor folks down ! " John, 
An' " All men up ! " say we, — 

White, yaller, black, an' brown, John : 
Now which is your idee ? 



Ole Uncle S. sez he, " I guess, 
John preaches wal," sez he ; 
" But, sermon thru, an' come to du, 
Why, there 's the old J. B. 
A-crowdin' you an' me ! " 

Shall it be love, or hate, John ? 

It 's you thet 's to decide ; 
Ain't your bonds held by Fate, John, 
Like all the world's beside ? 
Ole Uncle S. sez he, " I guess 
Wise men forgive," sez he, 
" But not forgit ; an' some time yit 
Thet truth may strike J. B., 
Ez wal ez you an' me ! " 

God means to make this land, John, 

Clear thru, from sea to sea, 
Believe an' understand, John, 
The wuth o' bein' free. 

Ole Uncle S. sez he, " I guess, 
God's price is high," sez he ; 
" But nothin' else than wut He sells 
Wears long, an' thet J. B. 
May larn, like you an' me ! " 



BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN, ESC, TO 
MR. HOSEA BIGLOW 

With the following Letter fi r om the Rev- 
erend Homer Wilbur, A. M. 

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC 
MONTHLY 

Jaalam, 7th Feb., 1862. 
Respected Friends, — If I know my- 
self, — and surely a man can hardly be 
supposed to have overpassed the limit of 
fourscore years without attaining to some 
proficiency in that most useful branch of 
learning (e coslo descendit, says the pagan 
poet), — I have no great smack of that 
weakness which would press upon the pub- 
lick attention any matter pertaining to my 
private affairs. But since the following 
letter of Mr. Sawin contains not only a 
direct allusion to myself, but that in con- 
nection with a topick of interest to all 
those engaged in the publick ministrations 
of the sanctuary, I may be pardoned for 
touching briefly thereupon. Mr. Sawin 
was never a stated attendant upon my 



240 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



preaching, — never, as I believe, even an 
occasional one, since the erection of the 
new house (where we now worship) in 
1845. He did, indeed, for a time, supply 
a not unacceptable bass in the choir ; but, 
whether on some umbrage (omnibus hoc 
vitium est cantoribus) taken against the 
bass-viol, then, and till his decease in 1850 
(cet. 77,) under the charge of Mr. Asaph 
Perley, or, as was reported by others, on 
account of an imminent subscription for a 
new bell, he thenceforth absented himself 
from all outward and visible communion. 
Yet he seems to have preserved (alta mente 
repostum), as it were, in the pickle of a 
mind soured by prejudice, a lasting scun- 
ner, as he would call it, against our staid 
and decent form of worship ; for I would 
rather in that wise interpret his fling, than 
suppose that any chance tares sown by my 
pulpit discourses should survive so long, 
while good seed too often fails to root it- 
self. I humbly trust that I have no per- 
sonal feeling in the matter ; though I 
know that, if we sound any man deep 
enough, our lead shall bring up the mud 
of human nature at last. The Bretons 
believe in an evil spirit which they call 
ar c'houskezik, whose office it is to make 
the congregation drowsy ; and though I 
have never had reason to think that he 
was specially busy among my flock, yet 
have I seen enough to make me sometimes 
regret the hinged seats of the ancient 
meeting-house, whose lively clatter, not 
unwillingly intensified by boys beyond eye- 
shot of the tithing-man, served at inter- 
vals as a wholesome reveil. It is true, I 
have numbered among my parishioners 
some who are proof against the prophylac- 
tick fennel, nay, whose gift of somnolence 
rivalled that of the Cretan Rip Van Win- 
kle, Epimenides, and who, nevertheless, 
complained not so much of the substance 
as of the length of my (by them unheard) 
discourses. Some ingenious persons of a 
philosophick turn have assured us that our 
pulpits were set too high, and that the 
soporifick tendency increased with the ratio 
of the angle in which the hearer's eye was 
constrained to seek the preacher. This 
were a curious topick for investigation. 
There can be no doubt that some sermons 
are pitched too high, and I remember 
many struggles with the drowsy fiend in 



my youth. Happy Saint Anthony of Padua, 
whose finny acolytes, however they might 
profit, could never murmur ! Quare fremu- 
erunt gentesf Who is he that can twice 
a week be inspired, or has eloquence (u\ 
ita dicani) always on tap ? A good man, 
and, next to David, a sacred poet (himself, 
haply, not inexpert of evil in this particu- 
lar), has said, — 

" The worst speak something good : if all want 

sense, 
God takes a text and preacheth patience." i j 
There are one or* two other points in Mr.) 
Sawin's letter which I would also brieflyj 
animadvert upon. And first, concerning\ 
the claim he sets up to a certain superior-/ 
ity of blood and lineage in the people of) 
our Southern States, now unhappily in re- 
bellion against lawful authority and their 
own better interests. There is a sort of 
opinions, anachronisms at once and ana-j 
chorisms, foreign both to the age and the) 
country, that maintain a feeble and buzz- 
ing existence, scarce to be called life, like 
winter flies, which in mild weather crawl 
out from obscure nooks and crannies to 
expatiate in the sun, and sometimes acquire, 
vigor enough to disturb with their enforced' 
familiarity the studious hours of the scholar. 
One of the most stupid and pertinacious 
of these is the theory that the Southern 
States were settled by a class of emigrants 
from the Old World socially superior to 
those who founded the institutions of New 
England. The Virginians especially lay 
claim to this generosity of lineage, which 
were of no possible account, were it not for 
the fact that such superstitions are some- 
times not without their effect on the course 
of human affairs. The early adventurers 
to Massachusetts at least paid their pas- 
sages ; no felons were ever shipped thither ; 
and though it be true that many deboshed 
younger brothers of what are called good 
families may have sought refuge in Vir- 
ginia, it is equally certain that a great part 
of the early deportations thither were the 
sweepings of the London streets and the 
leavings of the London stews. It was this 
my Lord Bacon had in mind when he 
wrote : " It is a shameful and unblessed 
thing to take the scum of people and 
wicked condemned men to be the people 
with whom you plant." That certain 
names are found there is nothing to the 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



241 



purpose, for, even had an alias been be- 
yond the invention of the knaves of that 
generation, it is known that servants were 
often called by their masters' names, as 
slaves are now. On what the heralds call 
the spindle side, some, at least, of the old- 
est Virginian families are descended from 
matrons who were exported and sold for so 
many hogsheads of tobacco the head. So 
notorious was this, that it became one of 
the jokes of contemporary playwrights, not 
only that men bankrupt in purse and char- 
acter were " food for the Plantations " 
(and this before the settlement of New 
England), but also that any drab would 
suffice to wive such pitiful adventurers. 
" Never choose a wife as if you were going 
to Virginia," says Middleton in one of his 
comedies. The mule is apt to forget all 
but the equine side of his pedigree. How 
early the counterfeit nobility of the Old 
Dominion became a topick of ridicule in 
the Mother Country may be learned from 
a play of Mrs. Behn's, founded on the Re- 
bellion of Bacon : for even these kennels 
of literature may yield a fact or two to 
pay the raking. Mrs. Flirt, the keeper 
of a Virginia ordinary, calls herself the 
daughter of a baronet, " undone in the late 
rebellion," — her father having in truth 
been a tailor, — and three of the Council, 
assuming to themselves an equal splendor 
of origin, are shown to have' been, one " a 
broken exciseman who came over a poor 
servant," another a tinker transported for 
theft, and the third " a common pickpocket 
often flogged at the cart's tail." The 
ancestry of South Carolina will as little 
pass muster at the Herald's Visitation, 
though I hold them to have been more 
reputable, inasmuch as many of them were 
honest tradesmen and artisans, in some 
measure exiles for conscience' sake, who 
would have smiled at the high-flying non- 
sense of their descendants. Some of the 
more respectable were Jews. The absurd- 
ity of supposing a population of eight mil- 
lions all sprung from gentle loins in the 
course of a century and a half is too mani- 
fest for confutation. But of what use to 
discuss the matter ? An expert geneal- 
ogist will provide any solvent man with a 
genus et proavos to order. My Lord Bur- 
leigh used to say, with Aristotle and the 
Emperor Frederick II. to back him, that 



" nobility was ancient riches," whence also 
the Spanish were wont to call their nobles 
ricos hombres, and the aristocracy of Amer- 
ica are the descendants of those who first 
became wealthy, by whatever means. Pe- 
troleum will in this wise be the source of 
much good blood among our posterity. 
The aristocracy of the South, such as it is, 
has the shallowest of all foundations, for • 
it is only skin-deep, — the most odious of 
all, for, while affecting to despise trade, it 
traces its origin to a successful traffick in 
men, women, and children, and still draws 
its chief revenues thence. And though, as 
Doctor Chamberlayne consolingly says in 
his " Present State of England," " to become 
a Merchant of Foreign Commerce, with- 
out serving any Apprentisage, hath been 
allowed no disparagement to a Gentleman 
born, especially to a younger Brother," yet 
I conceive that he would hardly have 
made a like exception in favour of the 
particular trade in question. Oddly enough 
this trade reverses the ordinary standards 
of social respectability no less than of 
morals, for the retail and domestick is as 
creditable as the wholesale and foreign is 
degrading to him who follows it. Are our 
morals, then, no better than mores after 
all ? I do not believe that such aristocracy 
as exists at the South (for I hold with 
Marius, fortissimum quemque generosissi- 
mum) will be found an element of any- 
thing like persistent strength in war, — 
thinking the saying of Lord Bacon (whom 
one quaintly called inductionis dominus et 
Verulamii) as true as it is pithy, that " the 
more gentlemen, ever the lower books of 
subsidies." It is odd enough as an histor- 
ical precedent, that, while the fathers of 
New England were laying deep in religion, 
education, and freedom the basis of a polity 
which has substantially outlasted any then 
existing, the first work of the founders of 
Virginia, as may be seen in Wingfield's 
"Memorial," was conspiracy and rebellion, 
— odder yet, as showing the changes which 
are wrought by circumstance, that the first 
insurrection in South Carolina was against 
the aristocratical scheme of the Proprie- 
tary Government. I do not find that the 
cuticular aristocracy of the South has added 
anything to the refinements of civilization 
except the carrying of bowie-knives and 
the chewing of tobacco, — a high - toned 



242 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



Southern gentleman being commonly not 
only quadrumanous but quidruminant. 

I confess that the present letter of Mr. 
Sawin increases my doubts as to the sincer- 
ity of the convictions which he professes, 
and I am inclined to think that the triumph 
of the legitimate Government, sure sooner 
or later to take place, will find him and a 
large majority of his newly adopted fellow- 
citizens (who hold with Daedalus, the pri- 
mal sitter-on-the-fence, that medium tenere 
tutissimum) original Union men. The crit- 
icisms towards the close of his letter on 
certain of our failings are worthy to be 
seriously perpended ; for he is not, as I 
think, without a spice of vulgar shrewd- 
ness. Fas est et ab hoste doceri : there is no 
reckoning without your host. As to the 
good-nature in us which he seems to gird 
at, while I would not consecrate a chapel, 
as they have not scrupled to do in France, 
to Notre Dame de la Haine (Our Lady of 
Hate), yet I cannot forget that the cor- 
ruption of good-nature is the generation 
of laxity of principle. Good-nature is our 
national characteristick ; and though it be, 
perhaps, nothing more than a culpable 
weakness or cowardice, when it leads us to 
put up tamely with manifold impositions 
and breaches of implied contracts (as too 
frequently in our publick conveyances) it 
becomes a positive crime when it leads us 
to look unresentfully on peculation, and to 
regard treason to the best Government that 
ever existed as something with which a 
gentleman may shake hands without soil- 
ing his fingers. I do not think the gallows- 
tree the most profitable member of our 
Sylva • but, since it continues to be planted, 
I would fain see a Northern limb ingrafted 
on it, that it may bear some other fruit 
than loyal Tennesseeans. 

A relick has recently been discovered on 
the east bank of Bushy Brook in North 
Jaalam, which I conceive to be an inscrip- 
tion in Runiek characters relating to the 
early expedition of the Northmen to this 
continent. I shall make fuller investiga- 
tions, and communicate the result in due 
season. Respectfully, 

Your obedient servant, 

Homer Wilbur, A. M. 

P. S. — I inclose a year's subscription 
from Deacon Tinkham. 



I hed it on my min' las' time, when I jo 

write ye started, 
To tech the leadin' f eaturs o' my gittin' m i 

convarted ; 
But, ez my letters hez to go clearn roun' 

by way o' Cuby, 
'T wun't seem no staler now than then, by 

th' time it gits where you be. 
You know up North, though sees an' things 

air plenty ez you please, 
Ther' warn't nut one on 'em thet come jes' 

square with my idees : 
They all on 'em wuz too much mixed with 

Covenants o' Works, 
An' would hev answered jest ez wal for 

Afrikins an' Turks, 
Per where 's a Christian's privilege an' his 

rewards ensuin', 
Ef 't ain't perfessin' right and eend 'thout 

nary need o' doin' ? 
I dessay they suit workin'-folks thet ain't 

noways pertie'lar, 
But nut your Southun gen'leman thet 

keeps his parpendie'lar ; 
I don't blame nary man thet casts his lot 

along o' his folks, 
But ef you cal'late to save me, 't must be 

with folks thet is folks ; 
Cov'nants o' works go 'ginst my grain, but 

down here I 've found out 
The true fus'-fem'ly A 1 plan, — here's 

how it come about. 
When I fus' sot up with Miss S,, sez she to 

* me, sez she, 
"Without you git religion, Sir, the thing 

can't never be ; 
Nut but wut I respeck," sez she, "your 

intellectle part, 
But you wun't noways du for me athout a 

change o' heart : 
Nothun religion works wal North, but it 's 

ez soft ez spruce, 
Compared to ourn, for keepin' sound," sez 

she, " upon the goose ; 
A day's experunce 'd prove to ye, ez easy 'z 

pull a trigger, 
It takes the Southun pint o' view to raise 

ten bales a nigger ; 
You '11 fin' thet human natur', South, ain't 

wholesome more 'n skin-deep, 
An' once 't a darkie 's took with it, he wun't 

be wuth his keep." 
" How shell I git it, Ma'am ? " — sez 

I. "Attend the nex' camp-meet- 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



243 



Sez she, " an' it '11 come to ye ez cheap ez 

onbleached sheetin'." 
Wal, so I went along an' hearn most an 

impressive sarmon 
About besprinklin' Afriky with fourth- 
proof dew o' Harmon : 
He did n't put no weaknin' in, but gin it tu 

us hot, 
'Z ef he an' Satan 'd ben two bulls in one 

five-acre lot : 
I don't purtend to foller him, but give ye 

jes' the heads; 
For pulpit ellerkence, you know, 'most 

oilers kin' o' spreads. 
Ham's seed wuz gin to us in chairge, an' 

should n't we be li'ble 
In Kingdom Come, ef we kep' back their 

priv'lege in the Bible ? 
The cusses an' the promerses make one gret 

chain, an' ef 
You snake one link out here, one there, how 

much on 't ud be lef ' ? 
All things wuz gin to man for 's use, his 

sarvice, an' delight; 
An' don't the Greek an' Hebrew words thet 

mean a Man mean White ? 
Ain't it belittlin' the Good Book in all its 

proudes' f eaturs 
To think 't wuz wrote for black an' brown 

an' 'lasses-colored creaturs, 
Thet could n' read it, ef they would, nor 

ain't by lor allowed to, 
But ough' to take wut we think suits their 

naturs, an' be proud to ? 
Warn't it more prof 'table to bring your raw 

materil thru 
Where you can work it inta grace an' inta 

cotton, tu, 
Than sendin' missionaries out where fevers 

might defeat 'em, 
An' ef the butcher did n' call, their p'rish- 

ioners might eat 'em ? 
An' then, agin, wut airthly use ? Nor 

'twarn't our fault, in so fur 
Ez Yankee skippers would keep on atotin' 

on 'em over. 
'T improved the whites by savin' 'em from 

ary need o' workin', 
An' kep' the blacks from bein' lost thru 

idleness an' shirkin' ; 
We took to 'em ez nat'ral ez a barn-owl 

doos to mice, 
An' hed our hull time on our hands to keep 

us out o' vice; 



It made us feel ez pop'lar ez a hen doos 

with one chicken, 
An' fill our place in Natur's scale by givin' 

'em a lickin': 
For why should Csesar git his dues more 'n 

Juno, Pomp, an' Cuffy ? 
It 's justifyin' Ham to spare a nigger when 

he 's stuffy. 
Where 'd their soles go tu, like to know, ef 

we should let 'em ketch 
Freeknowledgism an' Fourierism an' Speri- 

toolism an' sech ? 
When Satan sets himself to work to raise 

his very bes' muss, 
He scatters roun' onscriptur'l views relatin' 

to Ones'mus. 
You 'd ough' to seen, though, how his facs 

an' argymunce an' figgers 
Drawed tears o' real conviction from a lot 

o' pen'tent niggers! 
It warn't like Wilbur's meetin', where 

you 're shet up in a pew, 
Your dickeys sorrin' off your ears, an' bilin' 

to be thru; 
Ther' wuz a tent clost by thet hed a kag o' 

sunthin' in it, 
Where you could go, ef you wuz dry, an' 

damp ye in a minute; 
An' ef you did dror off a spell, ther' wuz 

n't no occasion 
To lose the thread, because, ye see, he 

bellered like all Bashan. 
It 's dry work f ollerin' argymunce an' so, 

'twix' this an' thet, 
I felt conviction weighin' down somehow 

inside my hat; 
It growed an' growed like Jonah's gourd, 

a kin' o' whirlin' ketched me, 
Ontil I fin'lly clean gin out an' owned up 

thet he 'd fetched me; 
An' when nine tenths o' th' perrish took to 

tumblin' roun' an' hollerin', 
I did n' fin' no gret in th' way o' turnin' tu 

an' follerin'. 
Soon ez Miss S. see thet, sez she, " Thet 's 

wut I call wuth seein' ! 
Thet 's actin' like a reas'nable an' intellectle 

bein' ! " 
An' so we fin'lly made it up, concluded to 

hitch hosses, 
An' here I be 'n my ellermunt among crea- 
tion's bosses; 
Arter I 'd drawed sech heaps o' blanks, 

Fortin at last hez sent a prize, 



244 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



An' chose me for a shinin' light o' mission- 
ary entaprise. 

This leads me to another pint on which I 've 

changed my plan 
O' thinkin' so 's 't I might become a 

straight-out Southun man. 
Miss S. (her maiden name wuz Higgs, o' 

the fus' fem'ly here) 
On her Ma's side 's all Juggernot, on Pa's 

all Cavileer, 
An' sence I 've merried into her an' stept 

into her shoes, 
It ain't more 'n nateral thet I should mod- 

derfy my views: 
I 've ben a-readin' in Debow ontil I 've 

fairly gut 
So 'nlightened thet I 'd full ez lives ha' ben 

a Dook ez nut; 
An' when we 've laid ye all out stiff, an' 

Jeff hez gut his crown, 
An' comes to pick his nobles out, wun't this 

child be in town ! 
We '11 hev an Age o' Chivverlry surpassin' 

Mister Burke's, 
Where every fem'ly is fus'-best an' nary 

white man works: 
Our system 's sech, the thing '11 root ez easy 

ez a tater; 
For while your lords in furrin parts ain't 

noways marked by natur', 
Nor sot apart from ornery folks in featurs 

nor in figgers, 
Ef ourn '11 keep their faces washed, you '11 

know 'em from their niggers. 
Ain't sech things wuth secedin' for, an' 

gittin' red o' you 
Thet waller in your low idees, an' will tell 

all is blue ? 
Fact is, we air a diff'rent race, an' I, for 

one, don't see, 
Sech havin' oilers ben the case, how w' ever 

did agree. 
It's sunthin' thet you lab'rin'-folks up 

North hed ough' to think on, 
Thet Higgses can't bemean themselves to 

rulin' by a Lincoln, — 
Thet men, (an' guv'nors, tu,) thet hez sech 

Normal names ez Pickens, 
Accustomed to no kin' o' work, 'thout 't is 

to givin' lickins, 
Can't measure votes with folks thet get 

their livins from their farms, 
An' prob'ly think thet Law 's ez good ez 

hevin' coats o' arms. 



Sence I 've ben here, I 've hired a chap to 

look about for me 
To git me a transplantable an' thrifty 

fem'ly-tree, 
An' he tells me the Sawins is ez much o' 

Normal blood 
Ez Pickens an' the rest on 'em, an' older 'n 

Noah's flood. 
Your Normal schools wun 't turn ye into 

Normals, for it 's clear, 
Ef eddykatin' done the thing, they 'd be 

some skurcer here. 
Pickenses, Boggses, Pettuses, Magoffins, 

Letchers, Polks, — 
Where can you scare up names like them 

among your mudsill folks ? 
Ther 's nothin' to compare with 'em, you 'd 

fin', ef you should glance, 
Among the tip-top femerlies in Englan', 

nor in France : 
I've hearn frum 'sponsible men whose 

word wuz full ez good 's their 

note, 
Men thet can run their face for drinks, an' 

keep a Sunday coat, 
That they wuz all on 'em come down, an' 

come down pooty fur, 
From folks thet, 'thout their crowns 

wuz on, ou' doors would n' never 

stir, 
Nor thet ther' warn't a Southun man but 

wut wuz primy fashy 
O' the bes' blood in Europe, yis, an' Afriky 

an' Ashy: 
Sech bern' the case, is 't likely we should 

bend like cotton wickin', 
Or set down under anythin' so low-lived ez 

a lickin' ? 
More 'n this, — hain't we the literatoor an 

science, tu, by gorry ? 
Hain't we them intellectle twins, them 

giants, Simms an' Maury, 
Each with full twice the ushle brains, like 

nothin' thet I know, 
'thout 't wuz a double-headed calf I see 

once to a show ? 

For all thet, I warn't jest at fust in favor 

o' secedin' ; 
I wuz for layin' low a spell to find out 

where 't wuz leadin', 
For hevin' South-Carliny try her hand at 

sepritnationin', 
She takin' resks an' findin' funds, an' we co- 

operationin', — 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



245 



I mean a kin' o' kangin' roun' an' settin' on 

the fence, 
Till Prov'dunce pinted how to jump an' 

save the most expense; 
I recollected thet 'ere mine o' lead * to 

Shiraz Centre 
Thet bust up Jabez Pettibone, an' didn't 

want to ventur' 
'Fore I wuz sartin wut come out ud pay for 

wut went in, 
For swappin' silver off for lead ain't the 

sure way to win; 
(An', fact, it doos look now ez though — 

but folks must live an' larn — 
We should git lead, an' more 'n we want, 

out o' the Old Consarn;) 
But when I see a man so wise an' honest 

ez Buchanan 
A-lettin' us hev all the forts an' all the 

arms an' cannon, 
Admittin' we wuz nat'lly right an' you wuz 

nat'lly wrong, 
Coz you wuz lab'rin'-folks an' we wuz wut 

they call bong-tong, 
An' coz there warn't no fight in ye more 'n 

in a mashed potater, 
While two o' us can't skurcely meet but 

wut we fight by natur', 
An' th' ain't a bar-room here would pay for 

openin' on 't a night, 
Without it giv the priverlege o' bein' shot 

at sight, 
Which proves we 're Natures noblemen, 

with whom it don't surprise 
The British aristoxy should feel boun' to 

sympathize, — 
Seem* all this, an' seein', tu, the thing wuz 

strikin' roots 
While Uncle Sam sot still in hopes thet 

some one 'd bring his boots, 
I thought th' ole Union's hoops wuz off, 

an' let myself be sucked in 
To rise a peg an' jine the crowd thet went 

for reconstructin', — 
Thet is to hev the pardnership under th' 

ole name continner 
Jest ez it wuz, we drorrin' pay, you findin' 

bone an' sinner, — 
On'y to put it in the bond, an' enter 't in 

the journals, 
Thet you 're the nat'ral rank an' file, an' 

we the nat'ral kurnels. 

Now this I thought a fees'ble plan, thet 
'ud work smooth ez grease, 



Suitin' the Nineteenth Century an' Upper 

Ten idees, 
An' there I meant to stick, an' so did most 

o' th' leaders, tu, 
Coz we all thought the chance wuz good o' 

puttin' on it thru ; 
But Jeff he hit upon a way o' helpin' on us 

forrard 
By bein' unannermous, — a trick you ain't 

quite up to, Norrard. 
A Baldin hain't no more 'f a chance with 

them new apple-corers 
Than folks's oppersition views aginst the 

Ringtail Roarers ; 
They '11 take 'em out on him 'bout east, — 

one canter on a rail 
Makes a man feel unannermous ez Jonah 

in the whale ; 
Or ef he 's a slow-moulded cuss thet can't 

seem quite t' 'gree, 
He gits the noose by tellergraph upon the 

nighes' tree : 
Their mission-work with Afrikins hez put 

'em up, thet 's sartin, 
To all the mos' across-lot ways o' preachin' 

an' convartin' ; 
I '11 bet my hat th' ain't nary priest, nor all 

on 'em together, 
Thet cairs conviction to the min' like Rev- 

eren' Taranfeather ; 
Why, he sot up with me one night, an' la- 
bored to sech purpose, 
Thet (ez an owl by daylight 'mongst a 

flock o J teazin' chirpers 
Sees clearer 'n mud the wickedness o' eatin' 

little birds) 
I see my error an' agreed to shen it arter- 

wurds ; 
An' I should say, (to jedge our folks by 

facs in my possession,) 
Thet three 's Unannermous where one 's a 

'Riginal Secession ; 
So it 's a thing you fellers North may safely 

bet your chink on, 
Thet we 're all water-proofed agin th' 

usurpin' reign o' Lincoln. 

Jeff 's some. He 's gut another plan thet hez 

pertic'lar merits, 
In givin' things a cheerfle look an' stiffnin' 

loose-hung sperits ; 
For while your million papers, wut with 

lyin' an' discussin', 
Keep folks's tempers all on eend a-fumin' 

an' a-fussin', 



246 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



A-wondrin' this an' guessin' thet, an' 

dreadin' every night 
The breechin' o' the Univarse '11 break 

afore it 's light, 
Our papers don't purtend to print on'y wut 

Guv'ment choose, 
An' thet insures us all to git the very best 

o' noose : 
Jeff hez it of all sorts an' kines, an' sarves 

it out ez wanted, 
So 's 't every man gits wut he likes an' no- 
body ain't scanted ; 
Sometimes it 's vict'ries (they 're 'bout 

all ther' is that's cheap down 

here,) 
Sometimes it 's France an' England on the 

jump to interfere. 
Fact is, the less the people know o' wut 

ther' is a-doin', 
The hendier 'tis for Guv'ment, sence it 

henders trouble brewin' ; 
An' noose is like a shinplaster, — it 's good, 

ef you believe it, 
Or, wut 's all same, the other man thet 's 

goin' to receive it : 
Ef you 've a son in th' army, wy, it 's com- 

fortin' to hear 
He '11 hev no gretter resk to run than seein' 

th' in'my's rear, 
Coz, ef an F. F. looks at 'em, they oilers 

break an' run, 
Or wilt right down ez debtors will thet 

stumble on a dun, 
(An' this, ef an'thin', proves the wuth o' 

proper fem'ly pride, 
Fer sech mean shucks ez creditors are all 

on Lincoln's side) ; 
Ef I hev scrip thet wun't go off no more 'n 

a Belgin rifle, 
An' read thet it 's at par on 'Change, it 

makes me feel deli'fle; 
It's cheerin', tu, where every man mus' 

fortify his bed, 
To hear thet Freedom 's the one thing our 

darkies mos'ly dread, 
An' thet experunce, time 'n' agin, to Dixie's 

Land hez shown 
Ther' 's nothin' like a powder-cask fer a 

stiddy corner-stone ; 
Ain't it ez good ez nuts, when salt is sellin' 

by the ounce 
For its own weight in Treash'ry-bons, (ef 

bought in small amounts,) 
When even whiskey 's gittin' skurce an 

sugar can't be found, 



To know thet all the ellerments o' luxury 

abound ? 
An' don't it glorify sal'-pork, to come to 

understand 
It 's wut the Bichmon' editors call fatness 

o' the land ! 
Nex' thing to knowin' you 're well off is 

nut to know when y' ain't ; 
An' ef Jeff says all's goin' wal, who'll 

ventur' t' say it ain't ? 

This cairn the Constitooshun roun' ez Jeff 

doos in his hat 
Is hendier a dreffle sight, an' comes more 

kin' o' pat. 
I tell ye wut, my jedgment is you 're pooty 

sure to fail, 
Ez long 'z the head keeps turnin' back for 

counsel to the tail : 
Th' advantiges of our consarn for bein' 

prompt air gret, 
While, 'long o' Congress, you can't strike, 

'f you git an iron het ; 
They bother roun' with argooin', an' va- 

r'ous sorts o' foolin', 
To make sure ef it 's leg'lly het, an' all the 

while it 's coolin', 
So 's 't when you come to strike, it ain't no 

gret to wish ye j'y on, 
An' hurts the hammer 'z much or more ez 

wut it doos the iron, 
Jeff don't allow no jawin'-sprees for three 

months at a stretch, 
Knowin' the ears long speeches suits air 

mostly made to metch ; 
He jes' ropes in your tonguey chaps an' 

reg'lar ten-inch bores 
An' lets 'em play at Congress, ef they '11 

du it with closed doors ; 
So they ain't no more bothersome than ef 

we 'd took an' sunk 'em, 
An' yit en j'y th' exclusive right to one 

another's Buncombe 
'thout doin' nobody no hurt, an' 'thout its 

costin' nothin', 
Their pay bein' jes' Confedrit funds, they 

findin' keep an' clothin' ; 
They taste the sweets o' public life, an' 

plan their little jobs, 
An' suck the Treash'ry (no gret harm, for 

it 's ez dry ez cobs,) 
An' go thru all the motions jest ez safe ez 

in a prison, 
An' hev their business to themselves, while 

Buregard hez hisn : 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



247 



Ez long 'z he gives the Hessians fits, com- 
mittees can't make bother 
'bout whether 't 's done the legle way or 

whether 't 's done tother. 
An' I tell you you 've gut to larn thet War 

ain't one long teeter 
Betwixt / wan? to an' 'T wun't du, debatin' 

like a skeetur 
Afore he lights, — all is, to give the other 

side a millin', 
An' arter thet 's done, th' ain't no resk but 

wut the lor '11 be willin' ; 
No metter wut the guv'ment is, ez nigh ez 

I can hit it, 
A lickin' 's constitooshunal, pervidin' We 

don't git it. 
Jeff don't stan' dilly-dallyin', afore he takes 

a fort, 
(With no one in,) to git the leave o' the 

nex' Soopreme Court, 
Nor don't want forty-'leven weeks o' jawin' 

an' expoundin', 
To prove a nigger hez a right to save him, 

ef he 's drowndin' ; 
Whereas ole Abe 'ud sink afore he 'd let a 

darkie boost him, 
Ef Taney should n't come along an' hed n't 

interdooced him. 
It ain't your twenty millions thet '11 ever 

block Jeff's game, 
But one Man thet wun't let 'em jog jest ez 

he 's takin' aim : 
Your numbers they may strengthen ye or 

weaken ye, ez 't heppens 
They 're willin' to be helpin' hands or 

wuss-'n-nothin' cap'ns. 

I 've chose my side, an' 't ain't no odds ef I 

wuz drawed with magnets, 
Or ef I thought it prudenter to jine the 

nighes' bagnets ; 
I 've made my ch'ice, an' ciphered out, 

from all I see an' heard, 
Th' ole Constitooshun never 'd git her decks 

for action cleared, 
Long 'z you elect for Congressmen poor 

shotes thet want to go 
Coz they can't seem to git their grub no 

otherways than so, 
An' let your bes' men stay to home coz they 

wun't show ez talkers, 
Nor can't be hired to fool ye an' sof'-soap 

ye at a caucus, — 
Long 'z ye set by Botashun more 'n ye do 

by folks's merits, 



Ez though experunce thriv by change o' 

sile, like corn an' kerrits, — 
Long 'z you allow a critter's " claims " coz, 

spite o' shoves an' tippins, 
He 's kep' his private pan jest where 

'twould ketch mos' public drip- 
pin's, — 
Long 'z A. '11 turn tu an' grin' B. 's exe, ef 

B. 11 help him grin' hisn, 
(An'- thet 's the main idee by which your 

leadin' men hev risen,) — 
Long 'z you let ary exe be groun', 'less 't is 

to cut the weasan' 
O' sneaks thet dunno till they 're told wut 

is an' wut ain't Treason, — 
Long 'z ye give out commissions to a lot o' 

peddlin' drones 
Thet trade in whiskey with their men an' 

skin 'em to their bones, — 
Long 'z ye sift out " safe " canderdates thet 

no one ain't afeard on 
Coz they 're so thund'rin' eminent for bein' 

never heard on, 
An' hain't no record, ez it 's called, for 

folks to pick a hole in, 
Ez ef it hurt a man to hev a body with a 

soul in, 
An' it wuz ostentashun to be showin' on 't 

about, 
When half his feller-citizens contrive to du 

without, — 
Long 'z you suppose your votes can turn 

biled kebbage into brain, 
An' ary man thet 's pop'lar 's fit to drive a 

lightnin'-train, — 
Long 'z you believe democracy means I 'm 

ez good ez you 5e, 
An' that a feller from the ranks can't be a 

knave or booby, — 
Long 'z Congress seems purvided, like yer 

street-cars an' yer 'busses, 
With oilers room for jes' one more o' your 

spiled-in-bakin' cusses, 
Dough 'thout the emptins of a soul, an' yit 

with means about 'em 
(Like essence-peddlers 1 ) thet '11 make 

folks long to be without 'em, 
Jes heavy 'nough to turn a scale thet 's 

doubtfle the wrong way, 
An' make their nat'ral arsenal o' bein' nasty 

P a y> — 

Long 'z them things last, (an' I don't see 
no gret signs of improvin',) 

1 A rustic euphemism for the American variety of 
the Mephitis. H. W. 



248 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



I sha'n't up stakes, not hardly yit, nor 't 
would n't pay for movin'; 

For, 'fore you lick us, it '11 be the long'st 
day ever you see. 

Yourn, (ez I 'xpec' to be nex' spring,) 

B., Markiss o' Big Boosy. 



A MESSAGE OF JEFF DAVIS IN 
SECRET SESSION 

Conjecturally reported by H. BiGLOW 

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC 
MONTHLY 

Jaalam, 10 March, 1862. 
Gentlemen, — My leisure has been so 
entirely occupied with the hitherto fruitless 
endeavour to decypher the Runick inscrip- 
tion whose fortunate discovery I mentioned 
in my last communication, that I have not 
found time to discuss, as I had intended, 
the great problem of what we are to do with 
slavery, — a topick on which the publick 
mind in this place is at present more than 
ever agitated. What my wishes and hopes 
are I need not say, but for safe conclusions 
I do not conceive that we are yet in posses- 
sion of facts enough on which to bottom 
them with certainty. Acknowledging the 
hand of Providence, as I do, in all events, 
I am sometimes inclined to think that they 
are wiser than we, and am willing to wait 
till we have made this continent once more 
a place where freemen can live in security 
and honour, before assuming any further 
responsibility. This is the view taken by 
my neighbour Habakkuk Sloansure, Esq., 
the president of our bank, whose opinion in 
the practical affairs of life has great weight 
with me, as I have generally found it to be 
justified by the event, and whose counsel, 
had I followed it, would have saved me 
from an unfortunate investment of a con- 
siderable part of the painful economies of 
half a century in the Northwest-Passage 
Tunnel. After a somewhat animated discus- 
sion with this gentleman a few days since, I 
expanded, on the audi alteram partem prin- 
ciple, something which he happened to say 
by way of illustration, into the following 
fable. 



FESTINA LENTE 

Once on a time there was a pool 
Fringed all about with flag-leaves cool 
And spotted with cow-lilies garish, 
Of frogs and pouts the ancient parish. 
Alders the creaking redwings sink on, 
Tussocks that house blithe Bob o' Lincoln 
Hedged round the unassailed seclusion, 
Where muskrats piled their cells Carthusian ; 
And many a moss-embroidered log, 
The watering-place of summer frog, 
Slept and decayed with patient skill, 
As watering-places sometimes will. 

Now in this Abbey of Theleme, 

Which realized the fairest dream 

That ever dozing bull-frog had, 

Sunned on a half-sunk lily-pad, 

There rose a party with a mission 

To mend the polliwogs' condition, 

Who notified the selectmen 

To call a meeting there and then. 

" Some kind of steps," they said, " are needed ; 

They don't come on so fast as we did: 

Let 's dock their tails ; if that don't make 'em 

Frogs by brevet, the Old One take 'em ! 

That boy, that came the other day 

To dig some flag-root down this way, 

His jack-knife left, and 't is a sign 

That Heaven approves of our design : 

'T were wicked not to urge the step on, 

When Providence has sent the weapon." 

Old croakers, deacons of the mire, 
That led the deep batrachian choir, 
TJk ! UJc ! Caronk ! with bass that might 
Have left Lablaehe's out of sight, 
Shook nobby heads, and said, " No go ! 
You 'd better let 'em try to grow : 
Old Doctor Time is slow, but still 
He does know how to make a pill." 

But vain was all their hoarsest bass, 
Their old experience out of place, 
And spite of croaking and entreating, 
The vote was carried in marsh-meeting. 

li Lord knows," protest the polliwogs, 

" We 're anxious to be grown-up frogs ; 

But don't push in to do the work 

Of Nature till she prove a shirk ; 

'T is not by jumps that she advances, 

But wins her way by circumstances : 

Pray, wait awhile, until you know 

We 're so contrived as not to grow ; 

Let Nature take her own direction, 

And she '11 absorb our imperfection ; 

You might n't like 'em to appear with, 

But we must have the things to steer with." 

" No," piped the party of reform, 
"All great results are ta'en by storm ; 
Fate holds her best gifts till we show 
We 've strength to make her let them go • 
The Providence that works in history, 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



249 



And seems to some folks such a mystery, 
Does not creep slowly on incog., 
But moves by jumps, a mighty frog ; 
No more reject the Age's chrism, 
Your queues are an anachronism ; 
No more the Future's promise mock, 
But lay your tails upon the block, 
Thankful that we the means have voted 
To have you thus to frogs promoted." 

The thing was done, the tails were cropped, 

And home each philotadpole hopped, 

In faith rewarded to exult, 

And wait the beautiful result. 

Too soon it came ; our pool, so long 

The theme of patriot bull-frog's song, 

Next day was reeking, fit to smother, 

With heads and tails that missed each other, • 

Here snoutless tails, there tailless snouts ; 

The only gainers were the pouts. 



From lower to the higher next, 
Not to the top, is Nature's text ; 
And embryo Good, to reach full stature, 
Absorbs the Evil in its nature. 

I think that nothing will ever give per- 
manent peace and security to this continent 
but the extirpation of Slavery therefrom, 
and that the occasion is nigh ; but I would 
do nothing hastily or vindictively, nor pre- 
sume to jog the elbow of Providence. No 
desperate measures for me till we are sure 
that all others are hopeless, — fiectere si ne- 
queo superos, Acheronta movebo. To make 
Emancipation a reform instead of a revolu- 
tion is worth a little patience^ that we may 
have the Border States first, and then the 
non-slaveholders of the Cotton States, with 
us in principle, — a consummation that 
seems to be nearer than many imagine. 
Fiat justitia, ruat caelum, is not to be taken 
in a literal sense by statesmen, whose prob- 
lem is to get justice done with as little jar 
as possible to existing order, which has at 
least so much of heaven in it that it is not 
chaos. Our first duty toward our enslaved 
brother is to educate him, whether he be 
white or black. The first need of the free 
black is to elevate himself according to the 
standard of this material generation. So 
soon as the Ethiopian goes in his chariot, he 
will find not only Apostles, but Chief 
Priests and Scribes and Pharisees willing 
to ride with him. 

" Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se 
Quam quod ridieulos homines faeit." 

I rejoice in the President's late Message, 



which at last proclaims the Government 
on the side of freedom, justice, and sound 
policy. 

As I write, comes the news of our dis- 
aster at Hampton Roads. I do not un- 
derstand the supineness which, after fair 
warning, leaves wood to an unequal conflict 
with iron. It is not enough merely to have 
the right on our side, if we stick to the old 
flint-lock of tradition. I have observed 
in my parochial experience (hand ignarus 
mali) that the Devil is prompt to adopt the 
latest inventions of destructive warfare, 
and may thus take even such a three-decker 
as Bishop Butler at an advantage. It is 
curious, that, as gunpowder made armour 
useless on shore, so armour is having its 
revenge by baffling its old enemy at sea ; 
and that, while gunpowder robbed land 
warfare of nearly all its picturesqueness 
to give even greater stateliness and sub- 
limity to a sea-fight, armour bids fair to 
degrade the latter into a squabble between 
two iron-shelled turtles. 

Yours, with esteem and respect, 

Homer Wilbur, A. M. 

P. S. — I had wellnigh forgotten to say 
that the object of this letter is to enclose a 
communication from the gifted pen of Mr. 
Biglow. 

I sent you a messige, my friens, t'other 

day, 
To tell you I 'd nothin' pertickler to say : 
't wuz the day our new nation gut kin' o' 

stillborn, 
So 't wuz my pleasant dooty t' acknow- 
ledge the corn, 
An' I see clearly then, ef I did n't before, 
Thet the augur in inauguration means bore. 
I need n't tell you thet my messige wuz 

written 
To diffuse correc' notions in France an' 

Gret Britten, 
An' agin to impress on the poppylar mind 
The comfort an' wisdom o' goin' it blind, — 
To say thet I did n't abate not a hooter 
O' my faith in a happy an' glorious futur', 
Ez rich in each soshle an' p'litickle blessin' 
Ez them thet we now hed the joy o' pos- 

sessin', 
With a people united, an' longin' to die 
For wut we call their country, without ask- 
in' why, 



25° 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



An' all the gret things we concluded to 

slope for 
Ez much within reach now ez ever — to 

hope for. 
"We 've gut all the ellerments, this very 

hour, 
Thet make up a fus'-class, self-governin' 

power: 
We 've a war, an' a debt, an' a flag; an' ef 

this 
Ain't to be inderpendunt, why, wut on airth 

is? 
An' nothin' now henders our takin' our 

station 
Ez the freest, enlightenedest, civerlized 

nation, 
Built up on our bran'-new politickle thesis 
Thet a Gov'ment's fust right is to tumble 

to pieces, — 
I say nothin' henders our takin' our place 
Ez the very fus'-best o' the whole human 

race, 
A spittin' tobacker ez proud ez you please 
On Victory's bes' carpets, or loafin' at 

ease 
In the Tool'ries front-parlor, discussin' af- 
fairs 
With our heels on the backs o' Napoleon's 

new chairs, 
An' princes a-mixin' our cocktails an' 



Excep', wal, excep' jest a very few things, 
Sech ez navies an' armies an' wherewith to 

P a 7> 
An' gettin' our sogers to run t' other way, 
An' not be too over-pertickler in tryin' 
To hunt up the very las' ditches to die in. 

Ther' are critters so base thet they want it 

explained 
Jes' wut is the totle amount thet we 've 



Ez ef we could maysure stupenjious events 
By the low Yankee stan'ard o' dollars an' 

cents: 
They seem to forgit, thet, sence last year 

revolved, 
We 've succeeded in gittin' seceshed an' 

dissolved, 
An' thet no one can't hope to git thru dis- 

solootion 
'thout some kin' o' strain on the best Con- 

stitootion. 
Who asks for a prospec' more flettrin' an' 

bright, 



When from here clean to Texas it 's all 

one free fight ? 
Hain't we rescued from Seward the gret 

leadin' featurs 
Thet makes it wuth while to be reasonin' 

creaturs ? 
Hain't we saved Habus Coppers, improved 

it in fact, 
By suspendin' the Unionists 'stid o' the 

Act? 
Ain't the laws free to all ? Where on 

airth else d' ye see 
Every freeman improvin' his own rope an' 

tree ? 
Ain't our piety sech (in our speeches an' 

messiges) 
Ez t' astonish ourselves in the bes'-com- 

posed pessiges, 
An' to make folks thet knowed us in th' 

ole state o' things 
Think convarsion ez easy ez drinkin' gin- 



It 's ne'ssary to take a good confident tone 
With the public; but here, jest amongst 

us, I own 
Things look blacker 'n thunder. Ther' 's 

no use denyin' 
We 're clean out o' money, an' 'most out o' 

lyin' ; 
Two things a young nation can't mennage 

without, 
Ef she wants to look wal at her fust comin' 

out; 
For the fust supplies physickle strength, 

while the second 
Gives a morril edvantage thet 's hard to be 

reckoned: 
For this latter I 'm willin' to du wut I 

can; 
For the former you '11 hev to consult on a 

plan, — 
Though our fust want (an' this pint I want 

your best views on) 
Is plausible paper to print I. O. U.s on. 
Some gennlemen think it would cure all 

our cankers 
In the way o' finance, ef we jes' hanged 

the bankers; 
An' I own the proposle 'ud square with my 

views, 
Ef their lives wuz n't all thet we 'd left 

'em to lose. 
Some say thet more confidence might be 

inspired, 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



25 1 



Ef we voted our cities an' towns to be 

fired, — 
A plan thet 'ud suttenly tax our endurance, 
Coz 't would be our own bills we should 

git for th' insurance; 
But cinders, no metter how sacred we 

think 'em, 
Might n't strike furrin minds ez good 

sources of income, 
Nor the people, perhaps, would n't like the 

eclaw 
O' bein' all turned into paytriots by law. 
Some want we should buy all the cotton 

an' burn it, 
On a pledge, when we 've gut thru the 

war, to return it, — 
Then to take the proceeds an' hold them ez 

security 
For an issue o' bonds to be met at maturity 
With an issue o' notes to be paid in hard 

cash 
On the fus' Monday follerin' the 'tarnal 

Allsmash: 
This hez a safe air, an', once hold o' the 

gold, 
'ud leave our vile plunderers out in the 

cold, 
An' might temp' John Bull, ef it warn't for 

the dip he 
Once gut from the banks o' my own Mas- 

sissippi. 
Some think we could make, , by arrangin' 

the figgers, 
A hendy home-currency out of our niggers ; 
But it wun't du to lean much on ary seen 

staff, 
For they 're gittin' tu current a'ready, by 

half. 

One gennleman says, ef we lef our loan 

out 
Where Floyd could git hold on 't he 'd take 

it, no doubt; 
But 't ain't jes' the takin, though 't hez a 

good look, 
We mus' git sunthin' out on it arter it 's 

took, 
An' we need now more 'n ever, with sorrer 

I own, 
Thet some one another should let us a loan, 
Sence a soger wun't fight, on'y jes' while 

he draws his 
Pay down on the nail, for the best of all 

causes, 



'thout askin' to know wut the quarrel 's 

about, — 
An' once come to thet, why, our game is 

played out. 
It 's ez true ez though I should n't never 

hev said it, 
Thet a hitch hez took place in our system 

o' credit; 
I swear it 's all right in my speeches an' 

messiges, 
But ther' 's idees afloat, ez ther' is about 



Folks wun't take a bond ez a basis to trade 

on, 
Without nosin' round to find out wut it 's 

made on, 
An' the thought more an' more thru the 

public min' crosses 
Thet our Treshry hez gut 'mos' too many 

dead hosses. 
Wut 's called credit, you see, is some like 

a balloon, 
Thet looks while it 's up 'most ez harn- 

some 'z a moon, 
But once git a leak in 't, an' wut looked so 

grand 
Caves righ' down in a jiffy ez flat ez your 

hand. 
Now the world is a dreffle mean place, for 

our sins, 
Where ther' ollus is critters about with 

long pins 
A-prickin' the bubbles we 've blowed with 

sech care, 
An' provin' ther' 's nothin' inside but bad 

air : 
They 're all Stuart Millses, poor- white trash, 

an' sneaks, 
Without no more chivverlry 'n Choctaws or 

Creeks, 
Who think a real gennleman's promise to 

pay 

Is meant to be took in trade's ornery way : 
Them fellers an' I could n' never agree ; 
They 're the nateral foes o' the Southun 

Idee ; 
I 'd gladly take all of our other resks on 

me 
To be red o' this low-lived politikle 'con- 

'my ! 

Now a dastardly notion is gittin' about 
Thet our bladder is bust an' the gas oozin' 
out, 



252 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



An' onless we can mennage in some way to 

stop it, 
Why, the thing 's a gone coon, an' we 

might ez wal drop it. 
Brag works wal at fust, but it ain't jes' the 

thing 
For a stiddy inves'ment the shiners to 

bring, 
An' votin' we 're prosp'rous a hundred 

times over 
Wun't change bein' starved into livin' in 

clover. 
Manassas done sunthin' tow'rds drawin' the 

wool 
O'er the green, antislavery eyes o' John 

Bull: 
Oh, warn't it a godsend, jes' when sech 

tight fixes 
Wuz crowdin' us mourners, to throw 

double-sixes ! 
I wuz tempted to think, an' it wuz n't no 

wonder, 
Ther' wuz reelly a Providence, — over or 

under, — 
When, all packed for Nashville, I fust 

ascertained 
From the papers up North wut a victory 

we 'd gained, 
't wuz the time for diffusin' correc' views 

abroad 
Of our union an' strength an' relyin' on 

God; 
An', fact, when 1 'd gut thru my fust big I 

surprise, 
I much ez half b'lieved in my own tallest 

lies, 
An' conveyed the idee thet the whole 

Southun popperlace 
Wuz Spartans all on the keen jump for 

Thermopperlies, 
Thet set on the Lincolnites' bombs till they 

bust, 
An' fight for the priv'lege o' dyin' the 

fust ; 
But Roanoke, Bufort, Millspring, an' the 

rest 
Of our recent starn-foremost successes out 

West, 
Hain't left us a foot for our swellin' to 

stand on, — 
We 've showed too much o' wut Buregard 

calls abandon, 
For all our Thermopperlies (an' it 's a 

marcy 



We hain't hed no more) hev ben clean vicy- 

varsy, 
An' wut Spartans wuz lef when the battle 

wuz done 
Wuz them thet wuz too unambitious to run. 

Oh, ef we hed on'y jes' gut Reecognition, 
Things now would ha' ben in a different 

position ! 
You 'd ha' hed all you wanted : the paper 

blockade 
Smashed up into toothpicks ; unlimited 

trade 
In the one thing thet 's needfle, till niggers, 

I swow, 
Hed ben thicker 'n provisional shin-plasters 

now ; 
Quinine by the ton 'ginst the shakes when 

they seize ye ; 
Nice paper to coin into C. S. A. specie ; 
The voice of the driver 'd be heerd in our 

land, 
An' the univarse scringe, ef we lifted our 

hand : 
Would n't thet be some like a fulfillin' the 

prophecies, 
With all the fus' fem'lies in all the fust 

offices ? 
't wuz a beautiful dream, an' all sorrer is 

idle,— 
But ef Lincoln would ha' hanged Mason an' 

Slidell ! 
For would n't the Yankees hev found they 'd 

ketched Tartars, 
Ef they 'd raised two sech critters as them 

into martyrs ? 
Mason wuz F. F. V., though a cheap card 

to win on, 
But t' other was jes' New York trash to 

begin on ; 
They ain't o' no good in Eurdpean pellices, 
But think wut a help they'd ha' ben on 

their gallowses ! 
They'd ha' felt they wuz truly fulfillin' 

their mission, 
An' oh, how dog-cheap we 'd ha' gut Ree- 
cognition ! 

But somehow another, wutever we 've 

tried, 
Though the the'ry 's fust-rate, the facs 

wun't coincide : 
Facs are contrary 'z mules, an' ez hard in 

the mouth, 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



2 53 



An' they alius hev showed a mean spite to 

the South. 
Sech bein' the case, we hed best look about 
For some kin' o' way to slip our necks out : 
Le' 's vote our las' dollar, ef one can be 

found, 
(An', at any rate, votin' it hez a good 

sound,) — 
Le' 's swear thet to arms all our people is 

fly in', 
(The critters can't read, an' wun't know 

how we 're lyin',) — 
Thet Toombs is advancin' to sack Cincin- 

nater, 
With a rovin' commission to pillage an' 

slahter, — 
Thet we 've thro wed to the winds all regard 

for wut 's lawfle, 
An' gone in for sunthin' promiscu'sly awfle. 
Ye see, hitherto, it's our own knaves an' 

fools 
Thet we 've used, (those for whetstones, 

an' t' others ez tools,) 
An' now our las' chance is in puttin' to test 
The same kin' o' cattle up North an' out 

West, — 
Your Belmonts, Vallandighams, Woodses, 

an' sech, 
Poor shotes thet ye could n't persuade us 

to tech, 
Not in ornery times, though we 're willin' 

to feed 'em ( 

With a nod now an' then, when we happen 

to need 'em ; 
Why, for my part, I 'd ruther shake hands 

with a nigger 
Than with cusses that load an' don't darst 

dror a trigger; 
They 're the wust wooden nutmegs the 

Yankees perdooce, 
Shaky everywheres else, an' jes' sound on 

the goose; 
They ain't wuth a cuss, an' I set nothin' by 

'em, 
But we 're in sech a fix thet I s'pose we 

mus' try 'em. 
I — But, Gennlemen, here 's a despatch 

jes' come in 
Which shows thet the tide 's begun turnin' 

agin', — 
Gret Cornfedrit success ! C'lumbus eeva- 

cooated! 
I mus' run down an' hev the thing properly 

stated, 
An' show wut a triumph it is, an' how lucky 



To fin'lly git red o' thet cussed Kentucky, — 
An' how, sence Fort Donelson, winnin' the 

day 
Consists in triumphantly gittin' away. 

No. V 

SPEECH OF HONOURABLE PRE- 
SERVED DOE IN SECRET CAU- 
CUS 

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC 
MONTHLY 

Jaalam, 12th April, 1862. 
Gentlemen, — As I cannot but hope 
that the ultimate, if not speedy, success of 
the national arms is now sufficiently ascer- 
tained, sure as I am of the righteousness of 
our cause and its consequent claim on the 
blessing of God, (for 1 would not show a 
faith inferior to that of the Pagan historian 
with his Facile evenit quod Bis cordi est,) it 
seems to me a suitable occasion to withdraw 
our minds a moment from the confusing din 
of battle to objects of peaceful and per- 
manent interest. Let us not neglect the 
monuments of preterite history because 
what shall be history is so diligently mak- 
ing under our eyes. Cras ingens iterabimus 
cequor j to-morrow will be time enough for 
that stormy sea ; to-day let me engage the 
attention of your readers with the Runick 
inscription to whose fortunate discovery I 
have heretofore alluded. Well may we say 
with the poet, Multa renascuntur quae jam 
cecidere. And I would premise, that, al- 
though I can no longer resist the evidence 
of my own senses from the stone before 
me to the ante-Columbian discovery of this 
continent by the Northmen, gens inclytissima, 
as they are called in a Palermitan inscrip- 
tion, written fortunately in a less debatable 
character than that which I am about to 
decipher, yet I would by no means be un- 
derstood as wishing to vilipend the merits 
of the great Genoese, whose name will 
never be forgotten so long as the inspiring 
strains of " Hail Columbia " shall continue 
to be heard. Though he must be stripped 
also of whatever praise may belong to the 
experiment of the egg, which I find prover- 
bially attributed by Castilian authors to a 
certain Juanito or Jack, (perhaps an off- 
shoot of our giant-killing my thus,) his name 



254 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



will still remain one of the most illustrious 
of modern times. But the impartial histo- 
rian owes a duty likewise to obscure merit, 
and my solicitude to render a tardy justice 
is perhaps quickened by my having known 
those who, had their own field of labour 
been less secluded, might have found a 
readier acceptance with the reading publick. 
I could give an example, but I forbear : 
forsitan nostris ex ossibus oritur ultor. 

Touching Runick inscriptions, I find that 
they may be classed under three general 
heads: 1°. Those which are understood by 
the Danish Royal Society of Northern An- 
tiquaries, and Professor Rafn, their Secre- 
tary; 2°. Those which are comprehensible 
only by Mr. Rafn; and 3°. Those which 
neither the Society, Mr. Rafn, nor anybody 
else can be said in any definite sense to un- 
derstand, and which accordingly offer pe- 
culiar temptations to enucleating sagacity. 
These last are naturally deemed the most 
valuable by intelligent antiquaries, and to 
this class the stone now in my possession 
fortunately belongs. Such give a pictur- 
esque variety to ancient events, because 
susceptible oftentimes of as many interpre- 
tations as there are individual archaeologists ; 
and since facts are only the pulp in which 
the Idea or event-seed is softly imbedded 
till it ripen, it is of little consequence what 
colour or flavour we attribute to them, 
provided it be agreeable. Availing myself 
of the obliging assistance of Mr. Arphaxad 
Bowers, an ingenious photographick artist, 
whose house-on-wheels has now stood for 
three years on our Meeting-House Green, 
with the somewhat contradictory inscrip- 
tion, — " our motto is onward" — I have 
sent accurate copies of my treasure to 
many learned men and societies, both na- 
tive and European. I may hereafter com- 
municate their different and {me judice) 
equally erroneous solutions. I solicit also, 
Messrs. Editors, your own acceptance of 
the copy herewith enclosed. I need only 
premise further, that the stone itself is a 
goodly block of metamorphick sandstone, 
and that the Runes resemble very nearly 
the ornithichnites or fossil bird-tracks of 
Dr. Hitchcock, but with less regularity or 
apparent design than is displayed by those 
remarkable geological monuments. These 
are rather the non bene junctarum discordia 
semina rerum. Resolved to leave no door 



open to cavil, I first of all attempted the 
elucidation of this remarkable example of 
lithick literature by the ordinary modes, 
but with no adequate return for my labour. 
I then considered myself amply justified 
in resorting to that heroick treatment the 
felicity of which, as applied by the great 
Bentley to Milton, had long ago enlisted 
my admiration. Indeed, I had already made 
up my mind, that, in case good fortune 
should throw any such invaluable record 
in my way, I would proceed with it in the 
following simple and satisfactory method. 
After a cursory examination, merely suf- 
ficing for an approximative estimate of its 
length, I would write down a hypothetical 
inscription based upon antecedent probabil- 
ities, and then proceed to extract from the 
characters engraven on the stone a meaning 
as nearly as possible conformed to this a 
priori product of my own ingenuity. The 
result more than justified my hopes, inas- 
much as the two inscriptions were made 
without any great violence to tally in all 
essential particulars. I then proceeded, 
not without some anxiety, to my second 
test, which was, to read the Runick letters 
diagonally, and again with the same success. 
With an excitement pardonable under the 
circumstances, yet tempered with thankful 
humility, I now applied my last and sever- 
est trial, my experimentum crucis. I turned 
the stone, now doubly precious in my eyes, 
with scrupulous exactness upside down. 
The physical exertion so far displaced my 
spectacles as to derange for a moment the 
focus of vision. I confess that it was with 
some tremulousness that I readjusted them 
upon my nose, and prepared my mind to 
bear with calmness any disappointment 
that might ensue. But, albo dies notanda 
lapillo I what was my delight to find that 
the change of position had effected none in 
the sense of the writing, even by so much 
as a single letter! I was now, and justly, as 
I think, satisfied of the conscientious exact- 
ness of my interpretation. It is as follows r 



BJARNA GRIMOLFSSON 

FIRST DRANK CLOUD-BROTHER 

THROUGH CHIDD-OF-LAND-AND- 

WATER : 

that is, drew smoke through a reed stem. 
In other words, we have here a record of 
the first smoking of the herb Nicotiana Ta- 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



2 55 



bacum by an European on this continent. 
The probable results of this discovery are 
so vast as to baffle conjecture. If it be 
objected, that the smoking of a pipe would 
hardly justify the setting up of a memorial 
stone, I answer, that even now the Moquis 
Indian, ere he takes his first whiff, bows 
reverently toward the four quarters of the 
sky in succession, and that the loftiest 
monuments have been reared to perpetuate 
fame, which is the dream of the shadow of 
smoke. The Saga, it will be remembered, 
leaves this Bjarna to a fate something like 
that of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, on board a 
sinking ship in the " wormy sea," having 
generously given up his place in the boat to 
a certain Icelander. It is doubly pleasant, 
therefore, to meet with this proof that the 
brave old man arrived safely in Vinland, 
and that his declining years were cheered 
by the respectful attentions of the dusky 
denizens of our then uninvaded forest. 
Most of all was I gratified, however, in 
thus linking forever the name of my native 
town with one of the most momentous 
occurrences of modern times. Hitherto 
Jaalam, though in soil, climate, and geo- 
graphical position as highly qualified to be 
the theatre of remarkable historical inci- 
dents as any spot on the earth's surface, 
has been, if I may say it without seem- 
ing to question the wisdom of Providence, 
almost maliciously neglected, as it might 
appear, by occurrences of world-wide inter- 
est in want of a situation. And in matters 
of this nature it must be confessed that 
adequate events are as necessary as the 
votes sacer to record them. Jaalam stood 
always modestly ready, but circumstances 
made no fitting response to her generous 
intentions. Now, however, she assumes her 
place" on the historick roll. I have hitherto 
been a zealous opponent of the Circean herb, 
but I shall now reexamine the question 
without bias. 

I am aware that the Rev. Jonas Tutchel, 
in a recent communication to the " Bogus 
Four Corners Weekly Meridian," has en- 
deavored to show that this is the sepulchral 
inscription of Thorwald Eriksson, who, as 
is well known, was slain in Yinland by the 
natives. But I think he has been misled by 
a preconceived theory, and cannot but feel 
that he has thus made an ungracious return 
for my allowing him to inspect the stone 



with the aid of my own glasses (he having 
by accident left his at home) and in my 
own study. The heathen ancients might 
have instructed this Christian minister in 
the rites of hospitality; but much is to be 
pardoned to the spirit of self-love. He must 
indeed be ingenious who can make out the 
words her hvilir from any character b i the in- 
scription in question, which, whatever else 
it may be, is certainly not mortuary. And 
even should the reverend gentleman succeed 
in persuading some fantastical wits of the 
soundness of his views, I do not se what use- 
ful end he will have gained. For: the Eng- 
lish Courts of Law hold the testimony of 
gravestones from the burial-grounds of Pro- 
testant dissenters to be questionable, even 
where it is essential in proving a descent, 
I cannot conceive that the epitaphial asser- 
tions of heathens should be esteemed of 
more authority by any man of orthodox 
sentiments. 

At this moment, happening to cast my 
eyes upon the stone, whose characters a 
transverse light from my southern window 
brings out with singular distinctness, an- 
other interpretation has occurred to me, 
promising even more interesting results. I 
hasten to close my letter in order to follow 
at once the clue thus providentially sug- 



I inclose, as usual, a contribution from 
Mr. Biglow, and remain, 

Gentlemen, with esteem and respect, 
Your Obedient Humble Servant, 
Homer Wilbur, A. M. 

I thank ye, my frien's, for the warmth o* 
your greetin': 

Ther' 's few airthly blessin's buu wut 's Tain 
an' fleetin'; 

But ef ther' is one thet hain't no cracks an' 
flaws, 

An' is wuth goin' in for, it 's pop'lar ap- 
plause; 

It sends up the sperits ez lively ez rockets, 

An' I feel it — wal, down to the eend o' my 
pockets. 

Jes' lovin' the people is Canaan in view, 

But it 's Canaan paid quarterly t' hev 'em 
love you; 

It 's a blessin' thet 's breakin' out ollus in 
fresh spots; 

It 's a-f ollerin' Moses 'thout losin' the flesh- 
pots. 



256 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



But, Gennlemen, 'seuse me, I ain't sech a 

raw cus 
Ez to go luggin' ellerkence into a caucus, — 
Ti- 1 ' "...■-, :, one where the call compre- 
hend 
Nut the People in person, but on'y their 

frien's; 
>" 'm so kin' o' used to convincin' the masses 
Uf. th' edvantage o' bein' self-governin' 

asses, 
I forgut thet toe 're all o' the sort thet pull 

wires 
An- arrange for the public their wants an' 

desires, 
An' thet wut we hed met for wuz jes' to 

agree 
W^it the People's opinions in futur' should 

be. 

Now, to come to the nub, we 've ben all 

disappinted, 
An' our leadin' idees are a kind o' disjinted, 
Though, fur ez the nateral man could 

discern, 
Things ough' to ha' took most an oppersite 

turn. 
But The'ry is jes' like a train on the rail, 
Thet, weather or no, puts her thru without 

fail, 
While Fac* 's the ole stage thet gits 

sloughed in the ruts, 
An' hez to allow for your darned efs an' 

buts, 
W so, nut intendin' no pers'nal reflections, 
They don't -don't nut alius, thet is, — 

make connections : 
Sometimes, ben it really doos seem thet 

they '4 oughter 
Combine jet; ez kindly ez new rum an' 

Both '11 be jest ez sot in their ways ez a 
bagnet, 

Ez otherwise-minded ez th' eends of a mag- 
net, 

An' folks like you 'n' me, thet ain't ept to 
be sold, 

Git somehow or 'nother left out in the cold. 

I expected 'fore this, 'thout no gret of a row, 
Jeff D. would ha' ben where A. Lincoln is 

now, 
With Taney to say 't wuz all legle an' fair, 
An' a jury o' Deemocrats ready to swear 
Thet the in gin o' State gut thro wed into 

the ditch 



By the fault o' the North in misplacin' the 

switch. 
Things wuz ripenin' fust-rate with Buchanan 

to nuss 'em; 
But the People — they would n't be Mexi- 
cans, cuss 'em! 
Ain't the safeguards o' freedom upsot, 'z 

you may say, 
Ef the right o' rev'lution is took clean 

away ? 
An' doos n't the right primy-fashy include 
The bein' entitled to nut be subdued ? 
The feet is, we 'd gone for the Union so 

strong, 
When Union meant South ollus right an' 

North wrong, 
Thet the People gut fooled into thinkin' it 

might 
Worry on middlin' wal with the North in 

the right. 
We might ha' ben now jest ez prosp'rous ez 

France, 
Where p'litikle enterprise hez a fair chance, 
An' the People is heppy an' proud et this 

hour, 
Long ez they hev the votes, to let Nap hev 

the power; 
But our folks they went an' believed wut 

we 'd told 'em 
An', the flag once insulted, no mortle could 

hold 'em. 
'T wuz pervokin' jest when we wuz cert'in 

to win, — 
An' I, for one, wun't trust the masses agin: 
For a People thet knows much ain't fit to 

be free 
In the self-cockin', back-action style o' 

J.D. 

I can't believe now but wut half on 't is 

lies; 
For who 'd thought the North wuz agoin' 

to rise, 
Or take the pervokin'est kin' of a stump, 
'thout 't wuz sunthin' ez pressin' ez Ga- 

br'el's las' trump ? 
Or who 'd ha' supposed, arter sech swell 

an' bluster 
'bout the lick-ary-ten-on-ye fighters they 'd 

muster, 
Raised by hand on briled lightnin', ez 

op'lent 'z you please 
In a primitive furrest o' femmily-trees, — 
Who 'd ha' thought thet them Southun- 

ers ever 'ud show 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



257 



Starns with pedigrees to 'em like theirn to 

the foe, 
Or, when the vamosin' come, ever to find 
Nat'ral masters in front an' mean white 

folks behind ? 
By ginger, ef I 'd ha' known half I know 

now, 
When I wuz to Congress, I would n't, I 

swow, 
Hev let 'em cair on so high-minded an' 

sarsy, 
'thout some show o' wut you may call vicy- 

varsy. 
To he sure, we wuz under a contrac' jes' then 
To be dreffle forbearin' towards Southun 

men ; 
We hed to go sheers in preservin' the bel- 

lance : 
An' ez they seemed to feel they wuz wastin' 

their tellents 
'thout some un to kick, 't warn't more 'n 

proper, you know, 
Each should funnish his part ; an' sence 

they found the toe, 
An' we wuz n't cherubs — wal, we found 

the buffer, 
For fear thet the Compromise System 

should suffer. 

I wun't say the plan hed n't onpleasant 

f eaturs, — 
For men are perverse an' onreasonin' crea- 

turs, 
An' f orgit thet in this life 't ain't likely to 

heppen 
Their own privit fancy should ollus be 

cappen, — 
But it worked jest ez smooth ez the key of 

a safe, 
An' the gret Union bearin's played free 

from all chafe. 
They warn't hard to suit, ef they hed their 

own way, 
An' we (thet is, some on us) made the 

thing pay : 
't wuz a fair give-an'-take out of Unck 

Sam's heap ; 
Ef they took wut warn't theirn, wut we 

give come ez cheap ; 
The elect gut the offices down to tide- 
waiter, 
The people took skinnin' ez mild ez a 

tater, 
Seemed to choose who they wanted tu, 

footed the bills, 



An' felt kind o' 'z though they wuz havin' 

their wills, 
Which kep' 'em ez harmless an' cherfle ez 

crickets, 
While all we invested wuz names on the 

tickets : 
Wal, ther' 's nothin', for folks fond o' 

lib'ral consumption 
Free o' charge, like democ'acy tempered 
umption ! 

Now warn't thet a system wuth pains in 

presarvin', 
Where the people found jints an' their 

frien's done the carvin', — 
Where the many done all o' their thinkin' 

ty proxy, 
An' vieri proud on 't ez long ez 't wuz 

christened Democ'cy, — 
Where the few let us sap all o' Freedom's 

foundations, 
Ef you call it reformin' with prudence an' 

patience, 
An' were willin' Jeff's snake-egg should 

hetch with the rest, 
Ef you writ " Constitootional " over the 

nest ? 
But it 's all out o' kilter, ('t wuz too good to 

last,) 
An' all jes' by J. D.'s perceedin' too fast ; 
Ef he 'd on'y hung on for a month or two 

m )re, 
We 'd ha' gut things fixed nicer 'n they hed 

b in before : 
Afore hu drawed off an' lef all in confu- 

We wuz safely entrenched in the ole Con- 

stitootion, 
With at outlyin', heavy-gun, casemated 

fort 
To rake all assailants, — I mean th' S. J. 

Court. 
Now I never '11 acknowledge (nut ef you 

should skin me) 
't wuz wise to abandon sech works to the 

u '] aj 
An' let him fin' out thet wut scared him so 

long, 
Our whole line of argyments, lookin' so 

strong, 
All our Scriptur an' law, every the'ry an' 

fac', 
Wuz Quaker -guns daubed with Pro-sla- 
very black. 
Why, ef the Republicans ever should git 



2 5 8 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



Andy Johnson or some one to lend 'em the 
wit 

An' the spunk jes' to mount Constitootion 
an' Court 

With Columbiad guns, your real ekle-rights 
sort, 

Or drill out the spike from the ole Declara- 
tion 

Thet can kerry a solid shot clearn roun' 
creation, 

We 'd better take maysures for shettin' up 
shop, 

An' put off our stock by a vendoo or swop. 

But they wun't never dare tu ; you '11 see 

'em in Edom 
'fore they ventur' to go where t.ieir doc- 
trines 'ud lead 'ern : 
They 've ben takin' our princerples up ez 

we dropt 'em, 
An' thought it wuz terrible 'cute to adopt 

'em ; 
But they '11 fin' out 'f -re long thet their 

hope's ben deceivin' 'em, 
An' thet princerples am't o' no good, ef 

you b'lieve in 'em ; 
It makes 'em tu stiff far a party to use, 
Where they 'd ough' to be easy 'z an ole 

pair o' shoes. 
If we say 'n our pletf orm thet all men are 

brothers, 
Wc don't mean thet some folks ain't more 

so 'n some others ; 
An' it 's wal understood thet we make a 

selection, 
An' thet brotherhood kin* o f subsides arter 

'lection. 
The fust thing for sound politicians to 

larn is, 
Thet Truth, to dror kindly in, all sorts o ? 

harness, 
Mus' be kep' in the abstract, — for, come 

to apply it, 
You're ept to hurt some folks's interists 

by it. 
Wal, these 'ere Republicans (some on 'em) 

ects 
Ez though gineral mexims 'ud suit speshle 

facts ; 
An' there 's where we '11 nick 'em, there 's 

where they '11 be lost : 
For applyin* your princerple 's wut makes 

it cost, 
An' folks don't want Fourth o' July t' in- 
terfere 



With the business-consarns o' the rest o' 

the year, 
No more 'n they want Sunday to pry an* 

to peek 
Into wut they are doin' the rest o' the 

week. 

A ginooine statesman should be on his 

guard, 
Ef he must hev beliefs, nut to b'lieve 'em 

tu hard ; 
For, ez sure ez he does, he'll be blartin' 

'em out 
'thout regardin' the natur' o' man more 'n 

a spout, 
Nor it don't ask much gumption to pick 

out a flaw 
In a party whose leaders are loose in the 

jaw: 
An' so in our own case I ventur' to hint 
Thet we 'd better nut air our perceedin's in 

print, 
Nor pass resserlootions ez long ez your arm 
Thet may, ez things heppen to turn, du us 

harm ; 
For when you 've done all your real mean- 
in' to smother, 
The darned things '11 up an' mean sunthin' 

or 'nother. 
Jeff 'son prob'ly meant wal with his "born 

free an' ekle," 
But it 's turned out a real crooked stick in 

the sekle ; 
It 's taken full eighty-odd year — don't you 

see? — 
From the pop'lar belief to root out thet 

idee, 
An', arter all, suckers on 't keep buddin' 

forth 
In the nat'lly onprincipled mind o' the 

North. 
No, never say nothin' without you 're com- 
pelled tu, 
An' then don't say nothin' thet you can be 

held tu, 
Nor don't leave no friction-idees laym* 

loose 
For the ign'ant to put to incend'ary use. 

You know I 'm a feller thet keeps a skinned 

eye 
On the leetle events thet go skurryin' by, 
Coz it 's of'ner by them than by gret ones 

you '11 see 
Wut the p'litickle weather is likely to be. 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



2 59 



Now I don't think the South 's more 'n 

begun to be licked, 
But I du think, ez Jeff says, the wind-bag 's 

gut pricked ; 
It '11 blow for a spell an' keep puffin' an' 

wheezin', 
The tighter our army an' navy keep 

squeezin', — 
For they can't help spread-eaglein' long 'z 

ther' 's a mouth 
To blow Enfield's Speaker thru lef ' at the 

South. 
But it 's high time for us to be settin' our 

faces 
Towards reconstructin' the national basis, 
With an eye to beginnin' agin on the jolly 

ticks 
We used to chalk up 'hind the back-door o' 

politics ; 
An' the fus' thing 's to save wut of Slav'ry 

ther' 's lef 
Arter this (I mus' call it) imprudence o' 

Jeff : 
For a real good Abuse, with its roots fur 

an' wide, 
Is the kin' o' thing / like to hev on my 

side ; 
A Scriptur' name makes it ez sweet ez a 

rose, 
An* it 's tougher the older an' uglier it 

grows — 
(I ain't speakin' now o' the righteousness 

of it, 
But the p'litickle purchase it gives an' the 

profit). 

Things look pooty squally, it must be 

allowed, 
An' I don't see much signs of a bow in the 

cloud : 
Ther' 's too many Deemocrats — leaders 

wut 's wuss 

Thet go for the Union 'thout carin' a 

cuss 
Ef it helps ary party thet ever wuz heard 

on, 
So our eagle ain't made a split Austrian 

bird on. 
But ther' 's still some consarvative signs to 

be found 
Thet shows the gret heart o' the People is 

sound : 
(Excuse me for usin' a stump-phrase agin, 
But, once in the way on 't, they loill stick 

like sin :) 



There 's Phillips, for instance, hez jes' 
ketched a Tartar 

In the Law-'n'-Order Party of ole Cincin- 
nater ; 

An' the Compromise System ain't gone out 
o' reach, 

Long 'z you keep the right limits on free- 
dom o' speech. 

'T warn't none too late, neither, to put on 
the gag, 

For he 's dangerous now he goes in for the 
flag. 

Nut thet I altogether approve o' bad eggs, 

They 're mos' gin'lly argymunt on its las' 
legs, — 

An' their logic is ept to be tu indiscrimi- 
nate, 

Nor don't ollus wait the right objecs to 
'liminate ; 

But there is a variety on 'em, you '11 find, 

Jest ez usefle an' more, besides bein' re- 
fined, — 

I mean o' the sort thet are laid by the dic- 
tionary, 

Sech ez sophisms an' cant, thet '11 kerry 
conviction ary 

Way thet you want to the right class o' 
men, 

An' are staler than all 't ever come from a 
hen : 

" Disunion " done wal till our resh Southun 
friends 

Took the savor all out on 't for national 
ends ; 

But I guess "Abolition" '11 work a spell 

yit, 

When the war 's done, an' so will " Forgive- 

an'-forgit." 
Times mus' be pooty thoroughly out o' all 

jint, 
Ef we can't make a gGod constitootional 

pint ; 
An' the good time '11 come to be grindin' 

our exes, 
When the war goes to seed in the nettle o' 

texes : 
Ef Jon'than don't squirm, with sech helps 

to assist him, 
I give up my faith in the free-suffrage sys- 
tem ; 
Democ'cy wun't be nut a mite interestin', 
Nor p'litikle capital much wuth investin' ; 
An' my notion is, to keep dark an' lay low 
Till we see the right minute to put in our 

blow. — 



260 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



But I 've talked longer now 'n I hed any 

idee, 
An' ther' 's others you want to hear more 'n 

you du me ; 
So I '11 set down an' give thet 'ere bottle a 

skrimmage, 
For I 've spoke till I 'm dry ez a real graven 

image. 



SUNTHIN' 



No. VI 



IN THE PASTORAL 
LINE 



TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC 
MONTHLY 

Jaalam, 17th May, 1862. 

Gentlemen, — At the special request of 
Mr. Biglow, I intended to inclose, together 
with his own contribution, (into which, at 
my suggestion, he has thrown a little more 
of pastoral sentiment than usual,) some pas- 
sages from my sermon on the day of the 
National Fast, from the text, " Remember 
them that are in bonds, as bound with 
them," Heb. xiii. 3. But I have not leisure 
sufficient at present for the copying of 
them, even were I altogether satisfied with 
the production as it stands. I should pre- 
fer, I confess, to contribute the entire dis- 
course to the pages of your respectable 
miscellany, if it should be found acceptable 
upon perusal, especially as I find the diffi- 
culty in selection of greater magnitude 
than I had anticipated. What passes with- 
out challenge in the fervour of oral deliv- 
ery, cannot always stand the colder crit- 
icism of the closet. I am not so great 
an enemy of Eloquence as my friend Mr. 
Biglow would appear to be from some pas- 
sages in his contribution for the current 
month. I would not, indeed, hastily sus- 
pect him of covertly glancing at myself in 
his somewhat caustick animadversions, al- 
beit some of the phrases he girds at are 
not entire strangers to my lips. I am a 
more hearty admirer of the Puritans than 
seems now to be the fashion, and believe, 
that, if they Hebraized a little too much in 
their speech, they showed remarkable prac- 
tical sagacity as statesmen and founders. 
But such phenomena as Puritanism are the 
results rather of great religious than of 



merely social convulsions, and do not long 
survive them. So soon as an earnest con- 
viction has cooled into a phrase, its work is 
over, and the best that can be done with it 
is to bury it. Ite, missa est. I am inclined 
to agree with Mr. Biglow that we cannot 
settle the great political questions which 
are now presenting themselves to the nation 
by the opinions of Jeremiah or Ezekiel as 
to the wants and duties of the Jews in their 
time, nor do I believe that an entire com- 
munity with their feelings and views would 
be practicable or even agreeable at the 
present day. At the same time I could 
wish that their habit of subordinating the 
actual to the moral, the flesh to the spirit, 
and this world to the other, were more 
common. They had found out, at least, 
the great military secret that soul weighs 
more than body. — But I am suddenly 
called to a sick-bed in the household of a 
valued parishioner. 

With esteem and respect, 

Your obedient servant, 

Homer Wilbur. 

Once git a smell o' musk into a draw, 
An' it clings hold like precerdents in law: 
Your gra'ma'am put it there, — when, 

goodness knows, — 
To jes' this-worldify her Sunday-clo'es; 
But the old chist wun't sarve her gran'son's 

wife, 
(For, 'thout new funnitoor, wut good in 

life ?) 
An' so ole clawfoot, from the precinks 

dread 
O' the spare chamber, slinks into the shed, 
Where, dim with dust, it fust or last sub- 
sides 
To holdin' seeds an' fifty things besides; 
But better days stick fast in heart an' husk, 
An' all you keep in 't gits a scent o' musk. 

Jes' so with poets: wut they 've airly read 
Gits kind o' worked into their heart an' 

head, 
So 's 't they can't seem to write but jest on 

sheers 
With furrin countries or played-out ideers, 
Nor hev a feelin', ef it doos n't smack 
O' wut some critter chose to feel 'way 

back: 
This makes 'em talk o' daisies, larks, an' 

things, 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



261 



Ez though we 'd nothin' here that blows an' 

sings, — 
(Why, I 'd give more for one live bobolink 
Than a square mile o' larks in printer's 

ink,) — 
This makes 'em think our fust o' May is 

May, 
Which 't ain't, for all the almanicks can 

say. 

little city-gals, don't never go it 
Blind on the word o' noospaper or poet! 
They 're apt to puff, an' May-day seldom 

looks 
Up in the country ez it doos in books; 
They 're no more like than hornets'-nests 

an' hives, 
Or printed sarmons be to holy lives. 
I, with my trouses perched on cowhide 

boots, 
Tuggin' my foundered feet out by the roots, 
Hev seen ye come to fling on April's hearse 
Your muslin nosegays from the milliner's, 
Puzzlin' to find dry ground your queen to 

choose, 
An' dance your throats sore in morocker 

shoes : 

1 've seen ye an' felt proud, thet, come wut 

would, 
Our Pilgrim stock wuz pethed with hardi- 
hood. 
Pleasure doos make us Yankees kind o' 

winch, 
Ez though 't wuz sunthin' paid for by the 

inch; 
But yit we du contrive to worry thru, 
Ef Dooty tells us thet the thing 's to du, 
An' kerry a hollerday, ef we set out, 
Ez stiddily ez though 't wuz a redoubt. 

I, country-born an' bred, know where to 

find 
Some blooms thet make the season suit the 

mind, 
An' seem to metch the doubtin' bluebird's 

notes, — 
Half-vent'rin' liverworts in furry coats, 
Bloodroots, whose rolled-up leaves ef you 

oncurl, 
Each on 'em 's cradle to a baby-pearl, — 
But these are jes' Spring's pickets; sure ez 

sin, 
The rebble frosts '11 try to drive 'em in; 
For half our May 's so awfully like May n't, 
't would rile a Shaker or an evrige saint; 



Though I own up I like our back'ard 
springs 

Thet kind o' haggle with their greens an' 
things, 

An' when you 'most give up, 'uthout more 
words 

Toss the fields full o' blossoms, leaves, an' 
birds ; 

Thet 's Northun natur', slow an' apt to 
doubt, 

But when it doos git stirred, ther' 's no gin- 
out! 

Fust come the blackbirds clatt'rin' in tall 

trees, 
An' settlin' things in windy Congresses, — 
Queer politicians, though, for I '11 be 

skinned 
Ef all on 'em don't head aginst the wind, 
'fore long the trees begin to show belief, — 
The maple crimsons to a coral-reef, 
Then saffern swarms swing off from all the 

willers 
So plump they look like yaller caterpil- 
lars, 
Then gray hossches'nuts leetle hands unfold 
Softer 'n a baby's be at three days old: 
Thet 's robin - redbreast's almanick; he 

knows 
Thet arter this ther' 's only blossom-snows.; 
So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse, 
He goes to plast'rin' his adobe house. 

Then seems to come a hitch, — things lag 

behind, 
Till some fine mornin' Spring makes up her 

mind, 
An' ez, when snow-swelled rivers cresh 

their dams 
Heaped-up with ice thet dovetails in an' 

jams, 
A leak comes spirtin' thru some pin-hole 

cleft, 
Grows stronger, fercer, tears out right an' 

left, 
Then all the waters bow themselves an' 

come, 
Suddin, in one gret slope o' shedderin' foam, 
Jes' so our Spring gits everythin' in tune 
An' gives one leap from Aperl into June : 
Then all comes crowdin' in ; afore you 

think, 
Young oak-leaves mist the side-hill woods 

with pink ; 
The catbird in the laylock-bush is loud ; 



262 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



The orchards turn to heaps o' rosy cloud ; 
Red-cedars blossom tu, though few folks 

know it, 
An' look all dipt in sunshine like a poet ; 
The lime-trees pile their solid stacks o' 

shade 
An' drows'ly simmer with the bees' sweet 

trade ; 
In ellum-shrouds the flashin' hangbird 

clings 
An' for the summer vy'ge his hammock 



All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' 

bowers 
The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden 

flowers, 
Whose shrinkin' hearts the school-gals love 

to try 
With pins, — they '11 worry yourn so, boys, 

bimeby ! 
But I don't love your cat'logue style, — do 

you ? — 
Ez ef to sell off Natur' by vendoo ; 
One word with blood in 't 's twice ez good 

ez two : 
'nuff sed, June's bridesman, poet o' the 

year, 
Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here ; 
Half-hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings, 
Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' 

wings, 
Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair, 
Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the 

air. 

I oil us feel the sap start in my veins 

In Spring, with curus heats an' prickly 

pains, 
Thet drive me, when I git a chance, to 

walk 
Off by myself to hev a privit talk 
With a queer critter thet can't seem to 

'gree 
Along o' me like most folks, — Mister 

Me. 
Ther' 's times when I 'm unsoshle ez a stone, 
An' sort o' suffercate to be alone, — 
I 'm crowded jes' to think thet folks are 

nigh, 
An' can't bear nothin' closer than the 

sky; 
Now the wind 's full ez shifty in the mind 
Ez wut it is ou'-doors, ef I ain't blind, 
An' sometimes, in the fairest sou'west 

weather, 



My innard vane pints east for weeks to- 
gether, 
My natur' gits all goose-flesh, an' my sins 
Come drizzlin' on my conscience sharp ez 

pins : 
Wal, et sech times I jes' slip out o' sight 
An' take it out in a fair stan'-up fight 
With the one cuss I can't lay on the shelf, 
The crook'dest stick in all the heap, — My- 
self. 

'T wuz so las' Sabbath arter meetin'-time : 
Findin' my f eelin's would n't noways rhyme 
With nobody's, but off the hendle flew 
An' took things from an east-wind pint o' 

view, 
I started off to lose me in the hills 
Where the pines be, up back o' 'Siah's 

Mills : 
Pines, ef you 're blue, are the best friends 

I know, 
They mope an' sigh an' sheer your feelin's 

so, — 
They hesh the ground beneath so, tu, I 

swan, 
You half-f orgit you 've gut a body on. 
Ther' 's a small school'us' there where four 

roads meet, 
The door-steps hollered out by little feet, 
An' side-posts carved with names whose 

owners grew 
To gret men, some on 'em, an' deacons, tu ; 
't ain't used no longer, coz the town hez gut 
A high-school, where they teach the Lord 

knows wut : 
Three-story larnin' 's pop'lar now ; I guess 
We thriv' ez wal on jes' two stories less, 
For it strikes me ther' 's sech a thing ez 

sinnin' 
By overloadin' children's underpinnin' : 
Wal, here it wuz I larned my ABC, 
An' it 's a kind o' favorite spot with me. 

We 're curus critters : Now ain't jes' the 

minute 
Thet ever fits us easy while we 're in it ; 
Long ez 't wuz futur', 't would be perfect 

bliss, — 
Soon ez it's past, thet time's wuth ten o' 

this ; 
An' yit there ain't a man thet need be told 
Thet Now 's the only bird lays eggs o' gold. 
A knee-high lad, I used to plot an' plan 
An' think 'twuz life's cap -sheaf to be a 

man; 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



263 



Now, gittin' gray, there 's nothin' I enjoy 
Like dreamin' back along into a boy : 
So the ole school'us' is a place I choose 
Afore all others, ef I want to muse ; 
I set clown where I used to set, an' git 
My boyhood back, an' better things with 

it,— 
Faith, Hope, an' sunthin', ef it is n't Cher- 

rity, 
It 's want o' guile, an' thet 's ez gret a rer- 

rity, — 
While Fancy's cushin', free to Prince and 

Clown, 
Makes the hard bench ez soft ez milk- 
weed-down. 

Now, 'fore I knowed, thet Sabbath arter- 

noon 
When I sot out to tramp myself in tune, 
I found me in the school'us' on my seat, 
Drummin' the march to No-wheres with my 

feet. 
Thinkin' o' nothin', I 've heerd ole folks 

say 
Is a hard kind o' dooty in its way: 
It 's thinkin' everythin' you ever knew, 
Or ever hearn, to make your feelin's blue. 
I sot there tryin' thet on for a spell : 
I thought o' the Rebellion, then o' Hell, 
Which some folks tell ye now is jest a met- 

terfor 
(A the'ry, p'raps, it wun't feel none the 

better for) ; 
I thought o' Reconstruction, wut we 'd win 
Patchin' our patent self-blow-up agin : 
I thought ef this 'ere milkin' o' the wits, 
So much a month, warn't givin' Natur' 

fits,— 
Ef folks warn't druv, findin' their own milk 

fail, 
To work the cow thet hez an iron tail, 
An' ef idees 'thout ripenin' in the pan 
Would send up cream to humor ary man : 
From this to thet I let my worryin' creep, 
Till finally I must ha' fell asleep. 

Our lives in sleep are some like streams 
thet glide 

'twixt flesh an' sperrit boundin' on each side, 

Where both shores' shadders kind o' mix 
an' mingle 

In sunthin' thet ain't jes' like either sin- 
gle; 

An' when you cast off moorin's from To- 



An' down towards To-morrer drift away, 
The imiges thet tengle on the stream 
Make a new upside - down'ard world o' 

dream : 
Sometimes they seem like sunrise-streaks 

an' warniu's 
O' wut '11 be in Heaven on Sabbath-morn- 

in's, 
An', mixed right in ez ef jest out o' spite, 
Sunthin' thet says your supper ain't gone 

right. 
I 'm gret on dreams, an' often when I 

wake, 
I 've lived so much it makes my mem'ry 

ache, 
An' can't skurce take a cat-nap in my 

cheer 
'thout hevin' 'em, some good, some bad, all 

queer. 

Now I wuz settin' where I 'd ben, it 

seemed, 
An' ain't sure yit whether I r'ally dreamed, 
Nor, ef I did, how long I might ha' slep', 
When I hearn some un stompin' up the 

step, 
An' lookin' round, ef two an' two make four, 
I see a Pilgrim Father in the door. 
He wore a steeple-hat, tall boots, an' spurs 
With rowels to 'em big ez ches'nut-burrs, 
An' his gret sword behind him sloped away 
Long 'z a man's speech thet dunno wut to 

say.— 
" Ef your name 's Biglow, an' your given- 
name 
Hosee," sez he, " it 's arter you I came; 
I 'm your gret-gran'ther multiplied by 

three." — 
" My wut ? " sez I. — " Your gret-gret- 

gret," sez he: 
" You would n't ha' never ben here but for 

me. 
Two hundred an' three year ago this May 
The ship I come in sailed up Boston Bay; 
I 'd been a cunnle in our Civil War, — 
But wut on airth hev you gut up one for ? 
Coz we du things in England, 't ain't for 

you 
To git a notion you can du 'em tu: 
I 'm told you write in public prints: ef 

true, 
It 's nateral you should know a thing or 

two." — 
" Thet air 's an argymunt I can't en- 
dorse, — 



264 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



't would prove, coz you wear spurs, you 
kep' a horse: 

For brains," sez I, "wutever you may 
think, 

Ain't boun' to cash the drafs o' pen-an'- 
ink, — 

Though mos' folks write ez ef they hoped 
• jes' quickenin' 

The churn would argoo skim-milk into 
thickenin' ; 

But skim-milk ain't a thing to change its 
view 

O' wut it 's meant for more 'n a smoky 
flue. 

But du pray tell me, 'fore we furder go, 

How in all Natur' did you come to know 

'bout our affairs," sez I, " in Kingdom- 
Come ? " — 

" Wal, I worked round at sperrit-rappin' 
some, 

An' danced the tables till their legs wuz 
gone, 

In hopes o' larnin' wut wuz goin' on," 

Sez he, " but mejums lie so like all-split 

Thet I concluded it wuz best to quit. 

But, come now, ef you wun't confess to 
knowin', 

You 've some conjectures how the thing 's 
a-goin'." — 

" Gran'ther," sez I, " a vane warn't never 
known 

Nor asked to hev a jedgment of its own; 

An' yit, ef 't ain't gut rusty in the jints, 

It 's safe to trust its say on certin pints: 

It knows the wind's opinions to a T, 

An' the wind settles wut the weather '11 be." 

" I never thought a scion of our stock 

Could grow the wood to make a weather- 
cock; 

When I wuz younger 'n you, skurce more 
'n a shaver, 

No airthly wind," sez he, " could make me 
waver ! " 

(Ez he said this, he clinched his jaw an' 
forehead, 

Hitchin' his belt to bring his sword-hilt 
forrard.) — 

" Jes so it wuz with me," sez I, " I swow, 

When / wuz younger 'n wut you see me 
now, — 

Nothin' from Adam's fall to Huldy's bon- 
net, 

Thet I warn't full-cocked with my jedg- 
ment on it; 

But now I 'm gittin' on in life, I find 



It 's a sight harder to make up my mind, — 
Nor I don't often try tu, when events 
Will du it for me free of all expense. 
The moral question 's ollus plain enough, — 
It 's jes' the human - natur' side thet 's 

tough; 
Wut 's best to think may n't puzzle me nor 

you, — 
The pinch comes in decidin' wut to du • 
Ef you read History, all runs smooth ez 

grease, 
Coz there the men ain't nothin' more 'n 

idees, — 
But come to make it, ez we must to-day, 
Th' idees hev arms an' legs an' stop the 

way: 
It 's easy fixin' things in facts an' figgers, — 
They can't resist, nor warn't brought up 

with niggers; 
But come to try your the'ry on, — why, 

then 
Your facts an' figgers change to ign'ant 

men 
Actin' ez ugly — " — " Smite 'em hip an* 

thigh ! " 
Sez gran'ther, " and let every man-child 

die! 
Oh for three weeks o' Crommle an' the 

Lord! 
Up, Isr'el, to your tents an' grind the 

sword ! " — 
" Thet kind o' thing worked wal in ole 

Judee, 
But you forgit how long it 's ben A. D. ; 
You think thet 's ellerkence, — I call it 

shoddy, 
A thing," sez I, " wun't cover soul nor 

body ; 
I like the plain all-wool o' common-sense, 
Thet warms ye now, an' will a twelve- 
month hence. 
You took to follerin' where the Prophets 

beckoned, 
An', fust you knowed on, back come Charles 

the Second; 
Now wut I want 's to hev all we gain 

stick, 
An' not to start Millennium too quick; 
We hain't to punish only, but to keep, 
An' the cure 's gut to go a cent'ry deep." 
" Wall, milk-an'-water ain't the best o' 

glue," 
Sez he, "an' so you'll find afore you're 

thru; 
Ef reshness venters sunthin', shilly-shally 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



265 



Loses ez often wut 's ten times the vally. 
Thet exe of ourn, when Charles's neck gut 

split, 
Opened *a gap thet ain't bridged over yit: 
Slav'ry 's your Charles, the Lord hez gin 

the exe " — 
" Our Charles," sez I, " hez gut eight mil- 
lion necks. 
The hardest question ain't the black man's 

right, 
The trouble is to 'mancipate the white ; 
One 's chained in body an' can be sot free, 
But t' other 's chained in soul to an idee : 
It 's a long job, but we shall worry thru it; 
Ef bagnets fail, the spellin'-book must 

du it." 
" Hosee," sez he, " I think you 're goin' to 

fail: 
The rettlesnake ain't dangerous in the tail ; 
This 'ere rebellion 's nothing but the ret- 

tle,— 
You '11 stomp on thet an' think you 've won 

the bettle; 
It 's Slavery thet 's the fangs an' thinkin' 

head, 
An* ef you want selvation, cresh it dead, — 
An' cresh it suddin, or you '11 larn by 

waitin' 
Thet Chance wun't stop to listen to de- 

batin' ! " — 
" God's truth ! " sez I, — " an' ef I held the 

club, 1 

An' knowed jes' where to strike, — but 

there 's the rub ! " — 
" Strike soon," sez he, " or you '11 be deadly 

ailin', — 
Folks thet 's afeared to fail are sure o' 

failin' ; 
God hates your sneakin' creturs thet be- 
lieve 
He '11 settle things they run away an' 

leave ! " 
He brought his foot down fercely, ez he 

spoke, 
An' give me sech a startle thet I woke. 

No. VII 
LATEST VIEWS OF MR. BIGLOW 

PRELIMINARY NOTE 

[It is with feelings of the liveliest pain that 
we inform our readers of the death of the Rev- 
erend Homer Wilbur, A. M., which took place 
suddenly, by an apoplectic stroke, on the after- 



noon of Christmas day, 1862. Our venerable 
friend (for so we may venture to call him, 
though we never enjoyed the high privilege of 
his personal acquaintance) was in his eighty- 
fourth year, having been born June 12, 1779, at 
Pigsgusset Precinct (now West Jerusha) in the 
then District of Maine. Graduated with dis- 
tinction at Hubville College in 1805, he pursued 
his theological studies with the late Reverend 
Preserved Thacker, D. D., and was called to 
the charge of the First Society in Jaalam in 
1809, where he remained till his death. 

" As an antiquary he has probably left no 
superior, if, indeed, an equal," writes his friend 
and colleague, the Reverend Jeduthun Hitch- 
cock, to whom we are indebted for the above 
facts ; " in proof of which I need only allude to 
his ' History of Jaalam, Genealogical, Topo- 
graphical, and Ecclesiastical,' 1849, which has 
won him an eminent and enduring place in our 
more solid and useful literature. It is only to 
be regretted that his intense application to his- 
torical studies should have so entirely with- 
drawn him from the pursuit of poetical compo- 
sition, for which he was endowed by Nature 
with a remarkable aptitude. His well-known 
hymn, beginning ' With clouds of care encom- 
passed round,' has been attributed in some col- 
lections to the late President Dwight, and it is 
hardly presumptuous to affirm that the simile 
of the rainbow in the eighth stanza would do no 
discredit to that polished pen." 

We regret that we have not room at present 
for the whole of Mr. Hitchcock's exceedingly 
valuable communication. We hope to lay more 
liberal extracts from it before our readers at an 
early day. A summary of its contents will give 
some notion of its importance and interest. It 
contains : 1st, A biographical sketch of Mr. 
Wilbur, with notices of his predecessors in the 
pastoral office, and of eminent clerical contem- 
poraries ; 2d, An obituary of deceased, from 
the Punkin-Falls "Weekly Parallel;" 3d, A 
list of his printed and manuscript productions 
and of projected works ; 4th, Personal anec- 
dotes and recollections, with specimens of table- 
talk ; 5th, A tribute to his relict, Mrs. Dorcas 
(Pileox) Wilbur ; 6th, A list of graduates fitted 
for different colleges by Mr. Wilbur, with bio- 
graphical memoranda touching the more dis- 
tinguished ; 7th, Concerning learned, charitable, 
and other societies, of which Mr. Wilbur was a 
member, and of those with which, had his life 
been prolonged, he would doubtless have been 
associated, with a complete catalogue of such 
Americans as have been Fellows of the Royal 
Society ; 8th, A brief summary of Mr. Wilbur's 
latest conclusions concerning the Tenth Horn 
of the Beast in its special application to recent 
events, for which the public, as Mr. Hitchcock 
assures us, have been waiting with feelings of 
lively anticipation ; 9th, Mr. Hitchcock's own 
views on the same topic; and, 10th, A brief 
essay on the importance of local histories. It 
will be apparent that the duty of preparing Mr. 
Wilbur's biography could not have fallen into 
more sympathetic hands. 



266 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



In a private letter with which the reverend 
gentleman has since favored us, he expresses 
the opinion that Mr. Wilbur's life was short- 
ened by our unhappy civil war. It disturbed 
his studies, dislocated all his habitual associa- 
tions and trains of thought, and unsettled the 
foundations of a faith, rather the result of habit 
than conviction, in the capacity of man for self- 
government. "Such has been the felicity of 
my life," he said to Mr. Hitchcock, on the very 
morning of the day he died, " that, through the 
divine mercy, I could always say, Summum nee 
metuo diem, nee opto. It has been my habit, as 
you know, on every recurrence of this blessed 
anniversary, to read Milton's ' Hymn of the 
Nativity ' till its sublime harmonies so dilated 
my soul and quickened its spiritual sense that I 
seemed to hear that other song which gave assur- 
ance to the shepherds that there was One who 
would lead them also in green pastures and be- 
side the still waters. But to-day I have been 
unable to think of anything but that mournful 
text, ' I came not to send peace, but a sword,' 
and, did it not smack of Pagan presumptuous- 
ness, could almost wish I had never lived to see 
this day." 

Mr. Hitchcock also informs us that his friend 
"lies buried in the Jaalam graveyard, under a 
large red-cedar which he specially admired. A 
neat and substantial monument is to be erected 
over his remains, with a Latin epitaph written 
by himself; for he was accustomed to say, 
pleasantly, ' that there was at least one occasion 
in a scholar's life when he might show the ad- 
vantages of a classical training.' " 

The following fragment of a letter addressed 
to us, and apparently intended to accompany 
Mr. Biglow's contribution to the present num- 
ber, was found upon his table after his decease. 
— Editors Atlantic Monthly.] 

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC 
MONTHLY 

Jaalam, 24th Dec, 1862. 
Respected Sirs, — The infirm state of 
my bodily health would be a sufficient 
apology for not taking up the pen at this 
time, wholesome as I deem it for the mind 
to apricate in the shelter of epistolary con- 
fidence, were it not that a considerable, I 
might even say a large, number of individ- 
uals in this parish expect from their pastor 
some publick expression of sentiment at 
this crisis. Moreover, Qui tacitus ardet 
magis uritur. In trying times like these, 
the besetting sin of undisciplined minds is 
to seek refuge from inexplicable realities in 
the dangerous stimulant of angry partisan- 
ship or the indolent narcotick of vague and 
hopeful vaticination : fortunamque suo tem- 
perat arbitrio. Both by reason of my age 



and my natural temperament, I am unfitted 
for either. Unable to penetrate the inscru- 
table judgments of God, I am more than 
ever thankful that my life has been pro- 
longed till I could in some small measure 
comprehend His mercy. As there is no 
man who does not at some time render him- 
self amenable to the one, — quum vix Jus- 
tus sit securus, — so there is none that does 
not feel himself in daily need of the other. 
I confess I cannot feel, as some do, a 
personal consolation for the manifest evils 
of this war in any remote or contingent 
advantages that may spring from it. I am 
old and weak, I can bear little, and can 
scarce hope to see better days ; nor is it 
any adequate compensation to know that 
Nature is young and strong and can bear 
much. Old men philosophize over the 
past, but the present is only a burthen and 
a weariness. The one lies before them like 
a placid evening landscape ; the other is 
full of the vexations and anxieties of house- 
keeping. It may be true enough that mis- 
cet hcec illis, prohibetque Clotho fortunam 
stare, but he who said it was fain at last to 
call in Atropos with her shears before her 
time ; and I cannot help selfishly mourn- 
ing that the fortune of our Republick could 
not at least stay till my days were num- 
bered. 

Tibullus would find the origin of wars in 
the great exaggeration of riches, and does 
not stick to say that in the days of the 
beechen trencher there was peace. But 
averse as I am by nature from all wars, 
the more as they have been especially fatal 
to libraries, I would have this one go on 
till we are reduced to wooden platters 
again, rather than surrender the principle 
to defend which it was undertaken. Though 
I believe Slavery to have been the cause of 
it, by so thoroughly demoralizing Northern 
politicks for its own purposes as to give 
opportunity and hope to treason, yet I would 
not have our thought and purpose diverted 
from their true object, — the maintenance 
of the idea of Government. We are not 
merely suppressing an enormous riot, but 
contending for the possibility of permanent 
order coexisting with demoeratical fickle- 
ness; and while I would not superstitiously 
venerate form to the sacrifice of substance, 
neither would I forget that an adherence to 
precedent and prescription can alone give 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



267 



that continuity and coherence under a dem- 
ocratical constitution which are inherent in 
the person of a despotick monarch and the 
selfishness of an aristocratical class. Stet 
pro ratione voluntas is as dangerous in a ma- 
jority as in a tyrant. 

I cannot allow the present production of 
my young friend to go out without a protest 
from me against a certain extremeness in 
his views, more pardonable in the poet than 
in the philosopher. While I agree with him, 
that the only cure for rebellion is suppres- 
sion by force, yet I must animadvert upon 
certain phrases where I seem to see a coin- 
cidence with a popular fallacy on the sub- 
ject of compromise. On the one hand there 
are those who do not see that the vital prin- 
ciple of Government and the seminal prin- 
ciple of Law cannot properly be made a 
subject of compromise at all, and on the 
other those who are equally blind to the 
truth that without a compromise of indi- 
vidual opinions, interests, and even rights, 
no society would be possible. In medio 
tutissimus. For my own part, I would 
gladly 

Ef I a song or two could make 

Like rockets druv by their own burnin', 

All leap an' light, to leave a wake 

Men's hearts an' faces skyward turn- 

. in ' ! .~ ' 

But, it strikes me, 't ain't jest the time 

Fer stringin' words with settisf action: 
Wut 's wanted now 's the silent rhyme 
'Twixt upright Will an' downright Ac- 
tion. 

Words, ef you keep 'em, pay their keep, 

But gabble 's the short cut to ruin; 
It 's gratis, (gals half-price,) but cheap 

At no rate, ef it henders doin'; 
Ther' 's nothin' wuss, 'less 't is to set 

A martyr-prem'um upon jawrin': 
Teapots git dangerous, ef you shet 

Their lids down on 'em with Fort War- 
ren. 

'Bout long enough it 's ben discussed 

Who sot the magazine afire, 
An' whether, ef Bob Wickliffe bust, 

'T would scare us more or blow us 
higher. 
D' ye s'pose the Gret Foreseer's plan 

Wuz settled fer him in town-meetin' ? 



Or thet ther' 'd ben no Fall o' Man, 
Ef Adam 'd on'y bit a sweetin' ? 

Oh, Jon'than, ef you want to be 

A rugged chap agin an' hearty, 
Go fer wutever '11 hurt Jeff D., 

Nut wut '11 boost up ary party. 
Here 's hell broke loose, an' we lay flat 

With half the univarse a-singein', 
Till Sen'tor This an' Gov'nor Thet 

Stop squabblin' fer the garding-ingin. 

It 's war we 're in, not politics; 

It 's systems wrastlin' now, not parties; 
An' victory in the eend '11 fix 

Where longest will an' truest heart is. 
An' wut 's the Guv'ment folks about ? 

Try in' to hope ther' 's nothin' doin', 
An' look ez though they did n't doubt 

Sunthin' pertickler wuz a-brewin'. 

Ther' 's critters yit thet talk an' act 

Fer wut they call Conciliation; 
They 'd hand a buff'lo-drove a tract 

When they wuz madder than all Ba- 
shan. 
Conciliate ? it jest means be kicked, 

No metter how they phrase an' tone it; 
It means thet we 're to set down licked, 

Thet we 're poor shotes an' glad to own 
it! 

A war on tick 's ez dear 'z the deuce, 

But it wun't leave no lastin' traces, 
Ez 't would to make a sneakin' truce 

Without no moral specie-basis: 
Ef greenbacks ain't nut jest the cheese, 

I guess ther' 's evils thet 's extremer, — 
Fer instance, — shinplaster idees 

Like them put out by Gov'nor Seymour. 

Last year, the Nation, at a word, 

When tremblin' Freedom cried to shield 
her, 
Flamed weldin' into one keen sword 

Waitin' an' Ion gin' fer a wielder: 
A splendid flash! — but how *d the grasp 

With sech a chance ez thet wuz tally ? 
Ther' warn't no meanin' in our clasp, — 

Half this, half thet, all shilly-shally. 

More men? More Man! It's there we 
fail; 
Weak plans grow weaker yit by length- 
enin' : 



268 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



Wilt use in addin' to the tail, 

When it 's the head 's in need o' strength- 
enin' ? 
We wanted one thet felt all Chief 

Froin roots o' hair to sole o' stockin', 
Square-sot with thousan'-ton belief 

In him an' us, ef earth went rockin' ! 

Ole Hick'ry would n't ha' stood see-saw 

'Bout doin' things till they wuz done 
with, — 
He 'd smashed the tables o' the Law 

In time o' need to load his gun with; 
He could n't see but jest one side, — 

Ef his, 't wuz God's, an' thet wuz plenty ; 
An' so his " Forrards I " multiplied 

An army's fightin' weight by twenty. 

But this 'ere histin', creak, creak, creak, 

Your cappen's heart up with a derrick, 
This tryin' to coax a lightnin'-streak 

Out of a half-discouraged hay-rick, 
This hangin' on mont' arter niont' 

Fer one sharp purpose 'mongst the 
twitter, — 
I tell ye, it doos kind o' stunt 

The peth and sperit of a critter. 

In six months where '11 the People be, 

Ef leaders look on revolution 
Ez though it wuz a cup o' tea, — 

Jest social el'ments in solution ? 
This weighin' things doos wal enough 

When war cools down, an' comes to 
writin' ; 
But while it 's makin', the true stuff 

Is pison-mad, pig-headed fightin'. 

Democ'acy gives every man 

The right to be his own oppressor ; 
But a loose Gov'ment ain't the plan, 

Helpless ez spilled beans on a dresser : 
I tell ye one thing we might larn 

From them smart critters, the Seced- 
ers, — 
Ef bein' right 's the fust consarn, 

The 'f ore-the-f ust 's cast-iron leaders. 

But 'pears to me I see some signs 
Thet we 're a-goin' to use our senses : 

Jeff druv us into these hard lines, 

An' ough' to bear his half th' expenses ; 

Slavery 's Secession's heart an' will, 

South, North, East, West, where'er you 
find it, 



' on your 



An' ef it drors into War's mill, 

D' ye say them thunder-stones sha'n't 
grind it ? 

D' ye s'pose, ef Jeff giv him a lick, 

Ole Hick'ry 'd tried his head to sof'n 
So 's 't would n't hurt thet ebony stick 

Thet 's made our side see stars so of'n ? 
" No ! " he 'd ha' thundered, 
knees, 

An' own one flag, one road to glory ! 
Soft-heartedness, in times like these, 

Shows sof 'ness in the upper story ! " 

An' why should we kick up a muss 

About the Pres'dunt's proclamation ? 
It ain't a-goin' to lib'rate us, 

Ef we don't like emancipation : 
The right to be a cussed fool 

Is safe from all devices human, 
It 's common (ez a gin'l rule) 

To every critter born o' woman. 

So we 're all right, an' I, fer one, 

Don't think our cause '11 lose in vally 
By rammin' Scriptur' in our gun, 

An' gittin' Natur' fer an ally : 
Thank God, say I, fer even a plan 

To lift one human bein's level, 
Give one more chance to make a man, 

Or, anyhow, to spile a devil ! 

Not thet I 'm one thet much expec' 

Millennium by express to-morrer; 
They will miscarry, — I rec'lec' 

Tu many on 'em, to my sorrer : 
Men ain't made angels in a day, 

No matter how you mould an' labor 
'em, 
Nor 'riginal ones, I guess, don't stay 

With Abe so of'n ez with Abraham. 

The'ry thinks Fact a pooty thing, 

An' wants the banns read right en- 
suin' ; 
But fact wun't noways wear the ring, 

'Thout years o' settin' up an' wooin': 
Though, arter all, Time's dial-plate 

Marks cent'ries with the minute-finger, 
An' Good can't never come tu late, 

Though it doos seem to try an' linger. 

An' come wut will, I think it 's grand 
Abe 's gut his will et last bloom-fur- 
naced 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



269 



In trial-flames till it '11 stand 

The strain o' bein' in deadly earnest : 
Thet 's wut we want, — we want to know 

The folks on our side hez the bravery 
To b'lieve ez hard, come weal, come woe, 

In Freedom ez Jeff doos in Slavery. 

Set the two forces foot to foot, 

An' every man knows who '11 be winner, 
Whose faith in God hez ary root 

Thet goes down deeper than his dinner: 
Then 't will be felt from pole to pole, 

Without no need o' proclamation, 
Earth's biggest Country 's gut her soul 

An' risen up Earth's Greatest Nation ! 



No. VIII 
KETTELOPOTOMACHIA 

PRELIMINARY NOTE 

[In the month of February, 1866, the editors 
of the " Atlantic Monthly " received from the 
Rev. Mr. Hitchcock of Jaalama letter enclosing 
the macaronic verses which follow, and promis- 
ing to send more, if more should be communi- 
cated. " They were rapped out on the evening 
of Thursday last past," he says, " by what 
claimed to be the spirit of my late predecessor 
in the ministry here, the Rev. Dr. Wilbur, 
through the medium of a young man at present 
domiciled in my family. As to the possibility 
of such spiritual manifestations, or whether 
they be properly so entitled, I express no 
opinion, as there is a division of sentiment on 
that subject in the parish, and many persons 
of the highest respectability in social standing 
entertain opposing views. The young man 
who was improved as a medium submitted 
himself to the experiment with manifest reluc- 
tance, and is still unprepared to believe in the 
authenticity of the manifestations. During 
his residence with me his deportment has al- 
ways been exemplary ; he has been constant in 
his attendance upon our family devotions and 
the public ministrations of the Word, and has 
more than once privately stated to me, that 
the latter had often brought him under deep 
concern of mind. The table is an ordinary 
quadrupedal one, weighing about thirty pounds, 
three feet seven inches and a half in height, 
four feet square on the top, and of beech or 
maple, I am not definitely prepared to say 
which. It had once belonged to my respected 
predecessor, and had been, so far as I can 
learn upon careful inquiry, of perfectly regular 



and correct habits up to the evening in ques- 
tion. On that occasion the young man previ- 
ously alluded to had been sitting with his 
hands resting carelessly upon it, while I read 
over to him at his request certain portions of 
my last Sabbath's discourse. On a sudden the 
rappings, as they are called, commenced to 
render themselves audible, at first faintly, but 
in process of time more distinctly and with 
violent agitation of the table. The young man 
expressed himself both surprised and pained 
by the wholly unexpected, and, so far as he 
was concerned, unprecedented occurrence. At 
the earnest solicitation, however, of several who 
happened to be present, he consented to go on 
with the experiment, and with the assistance 
of the alphabet commonly employed in similar 
emergencies, the following communication was 
obtained and written down immediately by 
myself. Whether any, and if so, how much 
weight should be attached to it, I venture no 
decision. That Dr. Wilbur had sometimes 
employed his leisure in Latin versification I 
have ascertained to be the case, though all 
that has been discovered of that nature among 
his papers consists of some fragmentary pass- 
ages of a version into hexameters of portions 
of the Song of Solomon. These I had com- 
municated about a week or ten days previ- 
ous [ly] to the young gentleman who officiated 
as medium in the communication afterwards 
received. I have thus, I believe, stated all the 
material facts that have any elucidative bear- 
ing upon this mysterious occurrence." 

So far Mr. Hitchcock, who seems perfectly 
master of Webster's unabridged quarto, and 
whose flowing style leads him into certain 
further expatiations for which we have not 
room. We have since learned that the young 
man he speaks of was a sophomore, put under 
his care during a sentence of rustication from 
College, where he had distinguished him- 
self rather by physical experiments on the 
comparative power of resistance in window- 
glass to various solid substances, than in the 
more regular studies of the place. In answer 
to a letter of inquiry, the professor of Latin 
says, " There was no harm in the boy that I 
know of beyond his loving mischief more than 
Latin, nor can I think of any spirits likely 
to possess him except those commonly called 
animal. He was certainly not remarkable for 
his Latinity, but I see nothing in the verses 
you enclose that would lead me to think them 
beyond his capacity, or the result of any special 
inspiration whether of beech or maple. Had 
that of birch been tried upon him earlier and 
more faithfully, the verses would perhaps have 
been better in quality and certainly in quan- 
tity." This exact and thorough scholar then 
goes on to point out many false quantities and 



270 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



barbarisms. It is but fair to say, however, that 
the author, whoever he was, seems not to have 
been unaware of some of them himself, as is 
shown by a great many notes appended to the 
verses as we received them, and purporting to be 
by Scaliger, Bentley, and others, — among them 
the Esprit de Voltaire ! These we have omit- 
ted as clearly meant to be humorous and alto- 
gether failing therein. 

Though entirely satisfied that the verses are 
altogether unworthy of Mr. Wilbur, who seems 
to have been a tolerable Latin scholar after the 
fashion of his day, yet we have determined to 
print them here, partly as belonging to the 
res gestce of this collection, and partly as a 
warning to their putative author which may 
keep him from such indecorous pranks for the 
future. 



KETTELOPOTOMACHIA 

P. Ovidii Nasonis carmen heroicum macaron- 
icum perplexametrum, inter Getas getico more 
compostum, denuo per medium ardentispiritu- 
alem adjuvante mensa diabolice obsessa, re- 
cuperatum, curaque Jo. Conradi Schwarzii um- 
brae, aliis necnon plurimis adjuvantibus, re- 
stitutum. 



Punctorum garretos colens et cellara 

Quinque, 
Gutteribus quae et gaudes sundayam abstin- 

gere frontem, 
Plerumque insidos solita fluitare liquore 
Tanglepedem quern homines appellant Di 

quoque rotgut, 
Pimpliidis, rubicundaque, Musa, O, bour- 

bonolensque, 5 

Fenianas rixas procul, alma, brogipotentis 
Patricii cyathos iterantis et horrida bella, 
Baekos dum virides viridis Brigitta remit- 

tit, 
Linquens, eximioscelebrem, da,Virginienses 
Rowdes, prsecipue et Te, heros alte, Polar- 

de! 10 

Insignes juvenesque, illo certamine lictos, 
Colemane, Tylere, nee vos oblivione relin- 

quam. 

Ampla aquilse invictse fausto est sub teg- 
mine terra, 

Backyfer, ooiskeo pollens, ebenoque bi- 
pede, 

Socors prsesidum et altrix (denique quidru- 
minantium), 15 



Duplefveorum uberrima; illis et integre 

cordi est 
Deplere assidue et sine proprio incommodo 

fiscum; 
Nunc etiam placidum hoc opus invictique 

secuti, 
Goosam aureos ni eggos voluissent immo 

necare 
Quae peperit, saltern ac de illis meliora me- 

rentem. 20 

Condidit hanc Smithius Dux, Captinus 

inclytus ille 
Regis Ulyssse instar, docti arcum intendere 

longum ; 
Condidit ille Johnsmith, Virginiamque vo- 

cavit, 
Settledit autem Jacobus rex, nomine pri- 
mus, 
Rascalis implens ruptis, blagardisque de- 

boshtis, 25 

Militibusque ex Falstaffi legione fugatis 
Wenchisque illi quas poterant seducere 

nuptas ; 
Virgineum, ah, littus matronis talibus im- 
parl 
Progeniem stirpe ex hoc non sine stigmate 

ducunt 
Multi sese qui jactant regum esse nepotes: 
Haud omnes, Mater, genitos quae nuper 

habebas 31 

Bello fortes, consilio cautos, virtute decoros, 
Jamque et habes, sparso si patrio in san- 
guine virtus, 
Mostrabisque iterum, antiquis sub astris 

reducta ! 
De illis qui upkikitant, dicebam, rumpora 

tanta, 35 

Letcheris et Floydis magnisque Extra or- 

dine Billis ; 
Est his prisca fides jurare et breakere wor- 

dum ; 
Poppere f ellerum a tergo, aut stickere clam 

bowiknifo, 
Haud sane facinus, dignum sed victrice 

lauro ; 
Larrupere et nigerum, factum praestantius 

ullo : 40 

Ast chlamydem piciplumatam, Icariam, 

flito et ineptam, 
Yanko gratis induere, ilium et valido railo 
Insuper acri equitare docere est hospitio uti. 
Nescio an ille Polardus duplefveoribus 

ortus, 
Sed reputo potius de radice poorwiteman- 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



271 



Fortuiti proles, ni fallor, Tylerus erat 
Prsesidis, omnibus ab Whiggis nominatus a 

poor cuss ; 
Et nobilem tertium evincit venerabile no- 

men. 
Ast animosi omnes bellique ad tympana ha ! 

ha! 
Vociferant lseti, procul et si proelia, sive so 
Hostem incautum atsito possint shootere 

salvi ; 
Imperiique capaces, esset si stylus aginen, 
Pro dulci spoliabant et sine dangere fito. 
Prse ceterisque Polardus : si Secessia licta, 
Se nunquam licturum jurat, res et unheard- 
of, 55 
Verbo haesit, similisque audaci roosteri in- 

victo, 
Dunghilli solitus rex pullos whoppere 

molles, 
Grantum, hirelingos stripes quique et splen- 

dida tollunt 
Sidera, et Yankos, territum et omnem sars- 

uit orbem. 
Usque dabant operam isti omnes, noctes- 

que diesque, 60 

Samuelem demulgere avuneulum, id vero 

siccum ; 
Uberibus sed ejus, et horum est culpa, re- 

motis, 
Parvam domi vaccam, nee mora minima, 

quserunt, 
Lacticarentem autem et droppam vix in die 

dantem ; 
Reddite avunculi, et exclamabant, reddite 

pappam ! 65 

Polko ut consule, gemens, Billy immur- 

murat Extra ; 
Echo respondit, thesauro ex vacuo, pap- 
pam ! 
Frustra explorant pocketa, ruber nare re- 

pertum ; 
Officia expulsi aspiciunt rapta, et Para- 

disum 
Occlusum, viridesque haud illis nascere 



Stupent tunc oculis madidis spittantque si- 

lenter. 
Adhibere usu ast longo vires prorsus in- 

epti, 
Si non ut qui grindeat axve trabemve re- 

uolvat, 
Virginiam excruciant totis nunc mightibu' 

matrem ; 
Non melius, puta, nono panis dimidiumne 

est ? 75 



Readere ibi non posse est casus commoner 
ullo; 

Tanto intentius imprimere est opus ergo 
statuta; 

Nemo propterea pejor, melior, sine doubto, 

Obtineat qui contractum, si et postea rhino ; 

Ergo Polardus, si quis, inexsuperabilis he- 
ros, so 

Colemanus impavidus nondum, atque in 
purpure natus 

Tylerus Iohanides celerisque in flito Na- 
thaniel, 

Quisque optans digitos in tantum stickere 
pium, 

Adstant accincti imprimere aut perrumpere 



Quales os miserum rabidi tres segre mo- 

lossi, 85 

Quales aut dubium textum atra in veste 

ministri, 
Tales circumstabant nunc nostri inopes hoc 

job. 
Hisque Polardus voce canoro talia fatus: 
Primum autem, veluti est mos, prseceps 

quisque liquorat, 
Quisque et Nicotianum ingens quid inserit 

atrum, 90 

Heroum nitidum decus et solamen avi- 

tum, 
Masticat ac simul altisonans, spittatque 

profuse : 
Quis de Virginia meruit prsestantius un- 

quam ? 
Quis se pro patria curavit impigre tu- 

tum? 
Speechisque articulisque hominum quis f or- 

tior ullus, 95 

Ingeminans pennse lickos et vulnera vo- 

cis? 
Quisnam putidius (hie) sarsuit Yankinimi- 

cos, 
Ssepius aut dedit ultro datam et broke his 

parolam ? 
Mente inquassatus solidaque, tyranno mi- 

nante, 
Horrisonis (hie) bombis mcenia et alta qua- 

tente, 100 

Sese promptum (hie) jactans Yankos lickere 

centum, 
Atque ad lastum invictus non surrendidit 

unquam ? 
Ergo haud meddlite, posco, mique relinquite 

(hie) hoc job, 
Si non — knif umque enormem mostrat spit- 
tatque tremendus. 



272 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



Dixerat : ast alii reliquorant et sine 
pauso 105 

Pluggos incumbunt maxillis, uterque vicis- 
sim 

Certaruine innocuo valde madidam inquinat 



Tylerus autem, dumque liquorat aridus 

hostis, 
Mirum aspicit duplumque bibentem, astante 



Ardens impavidusque edidit tamen impia 

verba; no 

Duplum quamvis te aspicio, esses atque 

viginti, 
Mendaeem dicerem totumque (bic) thrash- 

erem acervum; 
Nempe et thrasham, doggonatug (bic) sim 

nisi faxem; 
Lambastabo omnes eatawompositer-(hic) 

que chawam! 
Dixit et impulsus Ryeo ruitur bene ti- 

tus, 115 

Illi nam gravidum caput et laterem habet 

in hatto. 
Hunc inhiat titubansque Polardus, optat 

et ilium 
Stickere inermem, protegit autem rite 

Lyseus, 
Et pronos geminos, oculis dubitantibus, he- 

ros 
Cernit et irritus bostes, dumque excogitat 

utrum 120 

Primum inpitcbere, corruit, inter utrosque 

recumbit, 
Magno asino similis nimio sub pondere quas- 

sus: 
Colemanus bos mcestus, triste ruminansque 

solamen, 
Inspicit hiccans, circumspittat terque cu- 

bantes; 
Funereisque his ritibus bumidis inde solu- 

tis, 125 

Sternitur, invalidusque illis superincidit in- 

fans; 
Hos sepelit somnus et snorunt cornisonan- 

tes, 
Watcbmanus inscios ast calybooso deinde 

reponit. 



[The Editors of the " Atlantic " have re- 
ceived so many letters of inquiry concerning the 
literary remains of the late Mr. Wilbur, men- 
tioned by his colleague and successor, Rev. 



Jeduthun Hitchcock, in a communication from 
which we made some extracts in our number 
for February, 1863, and have been so repeatedly 
urged to print some part of them for the grati- 
fication of the public, that they felt it their duty 
at least to make some effort to satisfy so urgent 
a demand. They have accordingly carefully 
examined the papers intrusted to them, but find 
most of the productions of Mr. Wilbur's pen so 
fragmentary, and even chaotic, written as they 
are on the backs of letters in an exceedingly 
cramped chirography, — here a memorandum 
for a sermon; there an observation of the 
weather ; now the measurement of an extraor- 
dinary head of cabbage, and then of the cerebral 
capacity of some reverend brother deceased ; a 
calm inquiry into the state of modern literature, 
ending in a method of detecting if milk be im- 
poverished with water, and the amount thereof ; 
one leaf beginning with a genealogy, to be inter- 
rupted halfway down with an entry that the 
brindle cow had calved, — that any attempts at 
selection seemed desperate. His only complete 
work, " An Enquiry concerning the Tenth Horn 
of the Beast," even in the abstract of it given 
by Mr. Hitchcock, would, by a rough computa- 
tion of the printers, fill five entire numbers of 
our journal, and as he attempts, by a new appli- 
cation of decimal fractions, to identify it witl 
the Emperor Julian, seems hardly of immediate 
concern to the general reader. Even the Table 
Talk, though doubtless originally highly inter 
esting in the domestic circle, is so largely madi -, 
up of theological discussion and matters of loca ' 
or preterite interest, that we have found it har< 
to extract anything that would at all satisfy ex ] 
pectation. But, in order to silence further ir , 
quiry, we subjoin a few passages as illustration tj 
of its general character.] -* 

I think I could go near to he a perfect Chri ] 
tian if I were always a visitor, as I have sorai 1 
times been, at the house of some hospitah J 
friend. I can show a great deal of self-deni 
where the best of everything is urged upon n J 
with kindly importunity. It is not so very 
hard to turn the other cheek for a kiss. And 
when I meditate upon the pains taken for our 
entertainment in this life, on the endless va- 
riety of seasons, of human character and for- 
tune, on the costliness of the hangings and 
furniture of our dwelling here, I sometimes 
feel a singular joy in looking upon myself as 
God's guest, and cannot but believe that we 
should all be wiser and happier, because more 
grateful, if we were always mindful of our priv- 
ilege in this regard. And should we not rate 
more cheaply any honor that men could pay us, 
if we remembered that every day we sat at the 
table of the Great King ? Yet must we not 
forget that we are in strictest bonds His ser- 
vants also; for there is no impiety so abject 
as that which expects to be dead-headed (ut ita 
dicam) through life, and which, calling itself 
trust in Providence, is in reality asking Provi- 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



2 73 



denee to trust us and taking up all our goods 
on false pretences. It is a wise rule to take 
the world as we find it, not always to leave 
it so. 

It has often set me thinking when I find that 
I can always pick up plenty of empty nuts 
under my shagbark-tree. The squirrels know 
them by their lightness, and I have seldom 
seen one with the marks of their teeth in it. 
What a school-house is the world, if our wits 
would only not play truant! For I observe 
that men set most store by forms and symbols 
in proportion as they are mere shells. It is the 
outside they want and not the kernel. What 
stores of such do not many, who in material 
things are as shrewd as the squirrels, lay up for 
the spiritual winter-supply of themselves and 
their children! I have seen churches that 
seemed to me garners of these withered nuts, 
for it is wonderful how prosaic is the appre- 
hension of symbols by the minds of most men. 
It is not one sect nor another, but all, who, like 
the dog of the fable, have let drop the spiritual 
substance of symbols for their material shadow. 
If one attribute miraculous virtues to mere 
holy water, that beautiful emblem of inward 
purification at the door of God's house, another 
cannot comprehend the significance of baptism 
without being ducked over head and ears in 
the liquid vehicle thereof. 

[Perhaps a word of historical comment may 
be permitted here . My late revered predecessor 
was, I would humbly affirm, as free from pre- 
judice as falls to the lot of the most highly fa- 
vored individuals of our species. To be sure, I 
have heard him say that "what were called 
strong prejudices were in fact only the repulsion 
of sensitive organizations from that moral and 
even physical effluvium through which some 
natures by providential appointment, like cer- 
tain unsavory quadrupeds, gave warning of their 
neighborhood. Better ten mistaken suspicions 
of this kind than one close encounter." This he 
said somewhat in heat, on being questioned as 
to his motives for always refusing his pulpit to 
those itinerant professors of vicarious benevo- 
lence who end their discourses by taking up a 
collection. But at another time I remember 
his saying, "that there was one large thing 
which small minds always found room for, and 
that was great prejudices." This, however, by 
the way. The statement which I purposed to 
make was simply this. Down to A. d. 1830, 
Jaalam had consisted of a single parish, with 
one house set apart for religious services. _ In 
that year the foundations of a Baptist Society 
were laid by the labors of Elder Joash Q. Bal- 
com, 2d. As the members of the new body were 
drawn from the First Parish, Mr. Wilbur was 
for a time considerably exercised in mind. He 
even went so far as on one occasion to follow 
the reprehensible practice of the earlier Puritan 



divines in choosing a punning text, and preached 
from Hebrews xiii. 9: "Be not carried about 
with divers and strange doctrines." He after- 
wards, in accordance with one of his own 
maxims, — "to get a dead injury out of the 
mind as soon as is decent, bury it, and then ven- 
tilate," — in accordance with this maxim, I say, 
he lived on very friendly terms with Rev. Shear- 
jashub Scrimgour, present pastor of the Baptist 
Society in Jaalam. Yet I think it was never 
unpleasing to him that the church edifice of that 
society (though otherwise a creditable specimen 
of architecture) remained without a bell, as 
indeed it does to this day. So much seemed 
necessary to do away with any appearance of 
acerbity toward a respectable community of 
professing Christians, which might be suspected 
in the conclusion of the above paragraph. — 
J. H.] 

In lighter moods he was not averse from an 
innocent play upon words. Looking up from 
his newspaper one morning, as I entered his 
study, he said, " When I read a debate in Con- 
gress, I feel as if I were sitting at the feet of 
Zeno in the shadow of the Portico." On my ex- 
pressing a natural surprise, he added, smiling, 
" Why, at such times the only view which hon- 
orable members give me of what goes on in 
the world is through their intercalumniations." 
I smiled at this after a moment's reflection, 
and he added gravely, " The most punctilious 
refinement of manners is the only salt that will 
keep a democracy from stinking ; and what are 
we to expect from the people, if their repre- 
sentatives set them such lessons ? Mr. Everett's 
whole life has been a sermon from this text. 
There was, at least, this advantage in duelling, 
that it set a certain limit on the tongue. When 
Society laid by the rapier, it buckled on the 
more subtle blade of etiquette wherewith to 
keep obtrusive vulgarity at bay." In this 
connection, I may be permitted to recall a 
playful remark of his upon another occasion. 
The painful divisions in the First Parish, 
A. D. 1844, occasioned by the wild notions in 
respect to the rights of (what Mr. Wilbur, so 
far as concerned the reasoning faculty, always 
called) the unfairer part of creation, put forth 
by Miss Parthenia Almira Fitz, are too well 
known to need more than a passing allusion. 
It was during these heats, long since happily 
allayed, that Mr. Wilbur remarked that " the 
Church had more trouble in dealing with one 
sAeresiarch than with twenty Aeresiarchs," and 
that the men's conscia recti, or certainty of 
being right, was nothing to the women's. 

When I once asked his opinion of a poetical 
composition on which I had. expended no little 
pains, he read it attentively, and then re- 
marked, " Unless one's thought pack more 
neatly in verse than in prose, it is wiser to 



2 74 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



refrain. Commonplace gains nothing by being 
translated into rhyme, for it is something 
which no hocus-pocus can transubstantiate with 
the real presence of living thought. You en- 
title your piece, 'My Mother's Grave,' and ex- 
pend four pages of useful paper in detailing 
your emotions there. But, my dear sir, water- 
ing does not improve the quality of ink, even 
though you should do it with tears. To pub- 
lish a sorrow to Tom, Dick, and Harry is in 
some sort to advertise its unreality, for I have 
observed in my intercourse with the afflicted 
that the deepest grief instinctively hides its 
face with its hands and is silent. If your 
piece were printed, I have no doubt it would 
be popular, for people like to fancy that they 
feel much better than the trouble of feeling. 
I would put all poets on oath whether they 
have striven to say everything they possibly 
could think of, or to leave out all they could 
not help saying. In your own case, my worthy 
young friend, what you have written is merely 
a deliberate exercise, the gymnastic of senti- 
ment. For your excellent maternal relative is 
still alive, and is to take tea with me this even- 
ing, D. V. Beware of simulated feeling ; it is 
hypocrisy's first cousin ; it is especially dan- 
gerous to a preacher ; for he who says one day, 
' Go to, let me seem to be pathetic,' may be 
nearer than he thinks to saying, ' Go to, let me 
seem to be virtuous, or earnest, or under 
sorrow for sin.' Depend upon it, Sappho 
loved her verses more sincerely than she did 
Phaon, and Petrarch his sonnets better than 
Laura, who was indeed but his poetical stalk- 
ing-horse. After you shall have once heard 
that muffled rattle of clods on the coffin-lid of 
an irreparable loss, you will grow acquainted 
with a pathos that will make all elegies hate- 
ful. When I was of your age, I also for a 
time mistook my desire to write verses for an 
authentic call of my nature in that direction. 
But one day as I was going forth for a walk, 
with my head full of an ' Elegy on the Death 
of Flirtilla,' and vainly groping after a rhyme 
for lily that should not be silly or chilly, I saw 
my eldest boy Homer busy over the rain-water 
hogshead, in that childish experiment at par- 
thenogenesis, the changing a horse-hair into 
a water-snake. An immersion of six weeks 
showed no change in the obstinate filament. 
Here was a stroke of unintended sarcasm. 
Had I not been doing in my study precisely 
what my boy was doing out of doors ? Had 
my thoughts any more chance of coming to 
life by being submerged in rhyme than his 
hair by soaking in water ? I burned my elegy 
and took a course of Edwards on the Will. 
People do not make poetry ; it is made out of 
them by a process for which I do not find my- 
self fitted. Nevertheless, the writing of verses 



is a good rhetorical exercitation, as teaching 
us what to shun most carefully in prose. For 
prose bewitched is like window-glass with 
bubbles in it, distorting what it should show 
with pellucid veracity." 

It is unwise to insist on doctrinal points as 
vital to religion. The Bread of Life is whole- 
some and sufficing in itself, but gulped down 
with these kickshaws cooked up by theologians, 
it is apt to produce an indigestion, nay, even 
at last an incurable dyspepsia of scepticism. 

One of the most inexcusable weaknesses of 
Americans is in signing their names to what 
are called credentials. But for my interposi- 
tion, a person who shall be nameless would 
have taken from this town a recommendation 
for an office of trust subscribed by the select- 
men and all the voters of both parties, ascrib- 
ing to him as many good qualities as if it had 
been his tombstone. The excuse was that it 
would be well for the town to be rid of him, 
as it would erelong be obliged to maintain 
him. I would not refuse my name to modest 
merit, but I would be as cautious as in signing 
a bond. [I trust I shall be subjected to no 
imputation of unbecoming vanity, if I mention 
the fact that Mr. W. indorsed my own qualifi- 
cations as teacher of the high-school at Pe- 
quash Junction. J. H.] When I see a cer- 
tificate of character with everybody's name to 
it, I regard it as a letter of introduction from 
the Devil. Never give a man your name un- 
less you are willing to trust him with your 
reputation. 

There seem nowadays to be two sources of 
literary inspiration, — fulness of mind and 
emptiness of pocket. 

I am often struck, especially in reading 
Montaigne, with the obviousness and famil- 
iarity of a great writer's thoughts, and the 
freshness they gain because said by him. The 
truth is, we mix their greatness with all they 
say and give it our best attention. Johannes 
Faber sic cogitavit would be no enticing pre- 
face to a book, but an accredited name gives 
credit like the signature to a note of hand. It 
is the advantage of fame that it is always 
privileged to take the world by the button, 
and a thing is weightier for Shakespeare's ut- 
tering it by the whole amount of his person- 
ality. 

It is singular how impatient men are with 
overpraise of others, how patient with over- 
praise of themselves ; and yet the one does 
them no injury while the other may be their 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



2 75 



People are apt to confound mere alertness 
of mind with attention. The one is but the 
flying abroad of all the faculties to the open 
doors and windows at every passing rumor; 
the other is the concentration of every one of 
them in a single focus, as in the alchemist over 
his alembic at the moment of expected pro- 
jection. Attention is the stuff that memory is 
made of, and memory is accumulated genius. 

Do not look for the Millennium as imminent. 
One generation is apt to get all the wear it can 
out of the cast clothes of the last, and is al- 
ways sure to use up every paling of the old 
fence that will hold a nail in building the 



You suspect a kind of vanity in my genea- 
logical enthusiasm. Perhaps you are right ; 
but it is a imiversal foible. Where it does 
not show itself in a personal and private way, 
it becomes public and gregarious. We flatter 
ourselves in the Pilg*rim Fathers, and the Vir- 
ginian offshoot of a transported convict swells 
with the fancy of a cavalier ancestry. Pride 
of birth, I have noticed, takes two forms. One 
complacently traces himself up to a coronet ; 
another, defiantly, to a lapstone. The senti- 
ment is precisely the same in both cases, only 
that one is the positive and the other the neg- 
ative pole of it. 

Seeing a goat the other day kneeling in 
order to graze with less trouble, it seemed to 
me a type of the common notion of prayer. 
Most people are ready enough to go down on 
their knees for material blessings, but how 
few for those spiritual gifts which alone are 
an answer to our orisons, if we but knew it ! 

Some people, nowadays, seem to have hit 
upon a new moralization of the moth and the 
candle. They would lock up the light of 
Truth, lest poor Psyche should put it out in 
her effort to draw nigh to it. 



No. X 

MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE 
EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC 
MONTHLY 

Dear Sir, — Your letter come to han' 
Requestin' me to please be funny; 

But I ain't made upon a plan 

Thet knows wut 's comin', gall or honey: 

Ther' 's times the world doos look so queer, 
Odd fancies come afore I call 'em: 



An' then agin, for half a year, 

No preacher 'thout a call 's more solemn. 

You 're 'n want o' sunthin' light an' cute, 

Rattlin' an' shrewd an' kin' o' jingle- 
ish, 
An' wish, pervidin' it 'ould suit, 

I 'd take an' citify my English. 
I ken write long-tailed, ef I please, — 

But when I 'm jokin', no, I thankee ; 
Then, 'fore I know it, my idees 

Run helter-skelter into Yankee. 

Sence I begun to scribble rhyme, 

I tell ye wut, I hain't ben foolin'; 
The parson's books, life, death, an' time 

Hev took some trouble with my school- 
in' ; 
Nor th' airth don't git put out with me, 

Thet love her 'z though she wuz a wo- 
man; 
Why, th' ain't a bird upon the tree 

But half forgives my bein' human. 

An' yit I love th' unhighschooled way 

01' farmers hed when I wuz younger; 
Their talk wuz meatier, an' 'ould stay, 

While book-froth seems to whet your 
hunger; 
For puttin' in a downright lick 

'twixt Humbug's eyes, ther' 's few can 
metch it, 
An' then it helves my thoughts ez slick 

Ez stret-grained hickory doos a hetchet. 

But when I can't, I can't, thet 's all, 

For Natur' won't put up with gullin'; 
Idees you hev to shove an' haul 

Like a druv pig ain't wuth a mullein: 
Live thoughts ain't sent for ; thru all 
rifts 

O' sense they pour an' resh ye onwards, 
Like rivers when south-lyin' drifts 

Feel thet th' old airth 's a-wheelin' sun- 
wards. 

Time wuz, the rhymes come crowdin' thick 

Ez office-seekers arter' lection, 
An' into ary place 'ould stick 

Without no bother nor objection; 
But sence the war my thoughts hang back 

Ez though I wanted to enlist 'em, 
An' subs'tutes, — they don't never lack, 

But then they '11 slope afore you 've 
mist 'em. 



276 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



Nothin' don't seem like wut it wuz; 

I can't see wut there is to hender, 
An' yit my brains jes' go buzz, buzz, 

Like bumblebees agin a winder; 
'fore these times come, in all airth's row, 

Ther' wuz one quiet place, my head in, 
Where I could hide an' think, — but now 

It 's all one teeter, hopin', dreadin'. 

Where 's Peace ? I start; some clear- 
blown night, 
When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' 
number, 
An', creakin' 'cross the snow-crus' white, 

Walk the col' starlight into summer; 
Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell 
Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer 
Than the last smile thet strives to tell 
O' love gone heavenward in its shim- 
mer. 

I hev been gladder o' sech things 

Than cocks o' spring or bees o' clover, 
They filled my heart with livin' springs, 

But now they seem to freeze 'em over; 
Sights innercent ez babes on knee, 

Peaceful ez eyes o' pastur'd cattle, 
Jes' coz they be so, seem to me 

To rile me more with thoughts o' bat- 
tle. 

Indoors an' out by spells I try; 

Ma'am Natur' keeps her spin -wheel 
goin', 
But leaves my natur' stiff and dry 

Ez fiel's o' clover arter mo win'; 
An' her jes' keepin' on the same, 

Calmer 'n a clock, an' never carin', 
An' findin' nary thing to blame, 

Is wus than ef she took to swearin'. 

Snow-flakes come whisperin' on the pane 

The charm makes blazin' logs so pleas- 
ant, 
But I can't hark to wut they 're say'n', 

With Grant or Sherman oilers present; 
The chimbleys shudder in the gale, 

Thet lulls, then suddin takes to flap- 
pin' 
Like a shot hawk, but all 's ez stale 

To me ez so much sperit-rappin'. 

Under the yaller-pines I house, 

When sunshine makes 'em all sweet- 
scented, 



An' hear among their furry boughs 
The baskin' west-wind purr contented, 

While 'way o'erhead, ez sweet an' low 
Ez distant bells thet ring for meetin', 

The wedged wil' geese their bugles blow, 
Further an' further South retreatin'. 

Or up the slippery knob I strain 

An' see a hundred hills like islan's 
Lift their blue woods in broken chain 

Out o' the sea o' snowy silence ; 
The farm -smokes, sweetes' sight on airth, 

Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin' 
Seem kin' o' sad, an' roun' the hearth 

Of empty places set me thinkin'. 

Beaver roars hoarse with meltin' snows, 

An' rattles di'mon's from his granite; 
Time wuz, he snatched away my prose, 

An' into psalms or satires ran it; 
But he, nor all the rest thet once 

Started my blood to country-dances, 
Can't set me goin' more 'n a dunce 

Thet hain't no use for dreams an' 
fancies. 

Rat-tat-tat-tattle thru the street 

I hear the drummers makin' riot, 
An' I set thinkin' o' the feet 

Thet follered once an' now are quiet, — 
White feet ez snowdrops innercent, 

Thet never knowed the paths o' Satan, 
Whose comin' step ther' 's ears thet won't, 

No, not lifelong, leave off awaitin'. 

Why, hain't I held 'em on my knee ? 

Did n't I love to see 'em growin', 
Three likely lads ez wal could be, 

Hahnsome an' brave an' not tu knowin' ? 
I set an' look into the blaze 

Whose natur', jes' like theirn, keeps 
climbin', 
Ez long 'z it lives, in shinin' ways, 

An' half despise myself for rhymin'. 

Wut 's words to them whose faith -an' 
truth 

On War's red techstone rang true metal, 
Who ventered life an' love an' youth 

For the gret prize o' death in battle ? 
i To him who, deadly hurt, agen 
\~ Flashed on afoie the charge's thunder, 
Xippin' with fire the bolt of men 

Thet rived the Rebel line asunder ? 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



277 



'Tain't right to hev the young go fust, 

All throbbin' full o' gifts an' graces, 
Leavin' life's paupers dry ez dust 

To try an' make b'lieve fill their places : 
Nothin' but tells us wut we miss, 

Ther' 's gaps our lives can't never fay in, 
An' thet world seems so fur from this 

Lef for us loafers to grow gray in ! 

My eyes cloud up for rain; my mouth 

Will take to twitchin' roun' the corners; 
I pity mothers, tu, down South, 

For all they sot among the scorners: 
I 'd sooner take my chance to stan' 

At Jedgment where your meanest slave 
is, 
Than at God's bar hoi' up a han' 

Ez drippin' red ez yourn, Jeff Davis ! 

Come, Peace ! not like a mourner bowed 

For honor lost an' dear ones wasted, 
But proud, to meet a people proud, 

With eyes thet tell o' triumph tasted ! 
Come, with han' grippin' on the hilt, 

An' step thet proves ye Victory's daugh- 
ter ! 
Longin' for you, our sperits wilt 

Like shipwrecked men's on raf's for 
water. 

Come, while our country feels the lift 

Of a gret instinct shoutin' " Forwards ! " 
An' knows thet freedom ain't a gift 

Thet tarries long in han's o' cowards ! 
Come, sech ez mothers prayed for, when 

They kissed their cross with lips thet 
quivered, 
An' bring fair wages for brave men, 

A nation saved, a race delivered ! 



MR. HOSEA BIGLOW'S SPEECH 
IN MARCH MEETING 

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC 
MONTHLY 

Jaalam, April 5, 1866. 
My dear Sir, — 

(an* noticin' by your kiver thet you 're 
some dearer than wut you wuz, I enclose 
the deffrenee) I dunno ez I know jest how 
to interdooce this las' perduction of my 



mews, ez Parson Willber alius called 'em, 
which is goin' to be the last an' stay the last 
onless sunthin' pertikler sh'd interfear 
which I don't expec' ner I wun't yield tu 
ef it wuz ez pressin' ez a deppity Shiriff. 
Sence Mr. Wilbur's disease I hev n't hed 
no one thet could dror out my talons. He 
ust to kind o' wine me up an' set the 
penderlum agoin' an' then somehow I 
seemed to go on tick as it wear tell I run 
down, but the noo minister ain't of the 
same brewin' nor I can't seem to git ahold 
of no kine of huming nater in him but sort 
of slide rite off as you du on the eedge of a 
mow. Minnysteeril natur is wal enough 
an' a site better 'n most other kines I know 
on, but the other sort sech as Welbor hed 
wuz of the Lord's makin' an' naterally more 
wonderfle an' sweet tastin' leastways to 
me so fur as heerd from. He used to in- 
terdooce 'em smooth ez ile athout sayin' 
nothin' in pertickler an' I misdoubt he 
didn't set so much by the sec'nd Ceres as 
wut he done by the Fust, fact, he let on 
onct thet his mine misgive him of a sort of 
fallin' off in spots. He wuz as outspoken 
as a norwester he wuz, but I tole him I 
hoped the fall wuz from so high up thet a 
feller could ketch a good many times fust 
afore comin' bunt onto the ground as I see 
Jethro C. Swett from the meetin' house 
steeple up to th' old perrish, an' took up 
for dead but he 's alive now an' spry as wut 
you be. Turnin' of it over I recclected - 
how they ust to put wut they called Argy- 
munce onto the frunts of poymns, like 
poorches afore housen whare you could rest 
ye a spell whilst you wuz concludin' 
whether you 'd go in or nut espeshully ware 
tha wuz darters, though I most alius found 
it the best plen to go in fust an' think after- 
wards an' the gals likes it best tu. I dno 
as speechis ever hez any argimunts to 'em, 
I never see none thet hed an' I guess they 
never du but tha must alius be a B'ginnin' 
to every thin' athout it is Etarnity so I '11 
begin rite away an' anybody may put it 
afore any of his speeches ef it soots an' 
welcome. I don't claim no pay tent. 

THE ARGYMUNT 

Interducshin, w'ich may be skipt. Be- 
gins by talkin' about himself : thet 's jest 
natur an' most gin'ally alius pleasin', I 



278 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



b'leeve I 've notist, to one of the cumpany, 
an' thet 's more than wut you can say of 
most speshes of talkin'. Nex' comes the 
gittin' the goodwill of the orjunce by lettin' 
'em gether from wut you kind of ex'den- 
tally let drop thet they air about East, A 
one, an' no mistaik, skare 'em up an' take 
'em as they rise. Spring interdooced with 
a fiew approput flours. Speach finally 
begins witch nobuddy need n't feel oboly- 
gated to read as I never read 'em an' never 
shell this one ag'in. Subjick staited ; ex- 
panded; delayted; extended. Pump lively. 
Subjick staited ag'in so 's to avide all mis- 
taiks. Ginnle remarks ; continooed ; ker- 
ried on ; pushed f urder ; kind o' gin out. 
Subjick restaited ; dielooted ; stirred up 
permiscoous. Pump ag'in. Gits back to 
where he sot out. Can't seem to stay thair. 
Ketches into Mr. Seaward's hair. Breaks 
loose ag'in an' staits his subjick ; stretches 
it ; turns it ; folds it ; onfolds it ; folds it 
ag'in so 's 't no one can't find it. Argoos 
with an imedginary bean thet ain't aloud to 
say nothin' in repleye. Gives him a real 
good dressin' an' is settysfide he 's rite. 
Gits into Johnson's hair. No use tryin' to 
git into his head. Gives it up. Hez to 
stait his subjick ag'in ; doos it back'ards, 
sideways, eendways, criss-cross, bevellin', 
noways. Gits finally red on it. Concloods. 
Concloods more. Reads some xtrax. Sees 
his subjick a-nosin' round arter him ag'in. 
Tries to avide it. Wun't du. Misstates 
it. Can't conjectur' no other plawsable 
way of staytin' on it. Tries pump. No 
fx. Finely concloods to conclood. Yeels 
the flore. 

You kin spall an' punctooate thet as you 
please. I alius do, it kind of puts a noo 
soot of close onto a word, thisere funattick 
spellin' doos an' takes 'em out of the pris- 
sen dress they wair in the Dixonary. Ef I 
squeeze the cents out of 'em it 's the main 
thing, an' wut they wuz made for ; wut 's 
left 's jest pummis. 

Mistur Wilbur sez he to me onct, sez he, 
"Hosee," sez he, "in litterytoor the only 
good thing is Natur. It 's amazin' hard 
to come at," sez he, "but onct git it an' 
you 've gut everythin'. Wut 's the sweet- 
est small on airth ? " sez he. " Noomone 
hay," sez I, pooty bresk, for he wuz alius 
hankerin' round in hayin'. " Nawthin' of 
the kine," sez he. "My leetle Huldy's 



breath," sez I ag'in. "You're a good 
lad," sez he, his eyes sort of ripplin' like, 
for he lost a babe onct nigh about her age, 
— " you 're a good lad ; but 't ain't thet 
nuther," sez he. "Ef you want to know," 
sez he, " open your winder of a mornin' et 
ary season, and you '11 larn thet the best of 
perfooms is jest fresh air, fresh air" sez 
he, emphysizin', " athout no mixtur. Thet 's 
wut / call natur in writin', and it bathes 
my lungs and washes 'em sweet whenever 
I git a whiff on 't," sez he. I offen think 
o' thet when I set down to write, but the 
winders air so ept to git stuck, an' breakin' 
a pane costs sunthin'. 

Yourn for the last time, 
Nut to be continooed, 

HOSEA BlGLOW. 

I don't much s'pose, hows'ever I should 

plen it, 
I could git boosted into th' House or Sen- 
nit, — 
Nut while the twolegged gab-machine 's so 

plenty, 
'nablin' one man to du the talk o' twenty ; 
I 'm one o' them thet finds it ruther hard 
To mannyfactur' wisdom by the yard, 
An' maysure off, accordin' to demand, 
The piece-goods el'kence that I keep on 

hand, 
The same ole pattern runnin' thru an' 

thru, 
An' nothin' but the customer thet 's new. 
I sometimes think, the f urder on I go, 
Thet it gits harder to feel sure I know, 
An' when I 've settled my idees, I find 
'twarn't I sheered most in makin' up my 

mind ; 
't wuz this an' thet an' t' other thing thet 

done it, 
Sunthin' in th' air, I could n' seek nor shun 

it. 
Mos' folks go off so quick now in discus-: 

sion, 
All th' ole flint-locks seems altered to per- 
cussion, 
Whilst I in agin' sometimes git a hint, 
Thet I 'm percussion changin' back to flint; 
Wal, ef it 's so, I ain't agoin' to werrit, 
For th' ole Queen's-arm hez this pertickler 

merit, — 
It gives the mind a hahnsome wedth o' 

margin 
To kin' o make its will afore dischargin' : 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



279 



I can't make out but jest one ginnle 

rule, — 
No man need go an' make himself a fool, 
Nor jedgment ain't like mutton, thet can't 

bear 
Cookin' tu long, nor be took up tu rare. 



Ez I wuz 



r'n', I hain't no chance to 



So 's 't all the country dreads me onct a 

week, 
But I 've consid'ble o' thet sort o' head 
Thet sets to home an' thinks wut might be 

said, 
The sense thet grows an' werrits under- 
neath, 
Comin' belated like your wisdom-teeth, 
An' git so el'kent, sometimes, to my gardin 
Thet I don' vally public life a fardin'. 
Our Parson Wilbur (blessin's on his head !) 
'mongst other stories of ole times he hed, 
Talked of a feller thet rehearsed his 

spreads 
Beforehan' to his rows o' kebbige-heads, 
(Ef 't warn't Demossenes, I guess 't wuz 

Sisro,) 
Appealin' fust to thet an' then to this 

row, 
Accordin' ez he thought thet his idees 
Their diff'runt ev'riges o' brains 'ould 

please ; 
" An'," sez the Parson, '1' to hit right, you 

must 
Git used to maysurin' your hearers fust ; 
For, take my word for 't, when all 's come 

an' past, 
The kebbige-heads '11 cair the day et last ; 
Th' ain't ben a meetin' sence the worl' 

begun 
But they made (raw or biled ones) ten to 

one." 

I 've alius f oun' 'em, I allow, sence then 
About ez good for talkin' tu ez men ; 
They '11 take edvice, like other folks, to 

keep, 
(To use it 'ould be holdin' on 't tu cheap,) 
They listen wal, don' kick up when you 

scold 'em, 
An' ef they 've tongues, hev sense enough 

to hold 'em; 
Though th' ain't no denger we shall lose 

the breed, 
I gin'lly keep a score or so for seed, 
An' when my sappiness gits spry in spring, 



So 's 't my tongue itches to run on full 

swing, 
I fin' 'em ready-planted in March-meetin', 
Warm ez a lyceum - audience in their 

greetin', 
An' pleased to hear my spoutin' frum the 

fence, — 
Comin', ez 't doos, entirely free 'f expense. 
This year I made the follerin' observations 
Extrump'ry, like most other tri'ls o' pa- 
tience, 
An', no reporters bein' sent express 
To work their abstrac's up into a mess 
Ez like th' oridg'nal ez a woodcut pictur' 
Thet chokes the life out like a boy-constric- 
tor, 
I Ve writ 'em out, an' so avide all jeal'sies 
'twixt nonsense o' my own an' some one's 
else's. 

(N. B. Reporters gin'lly git a hint 
To make dull orjunces seem 'live in print, 
An', ez I hev t' report myself, I vum, 
I '11 put th' applauses where they 'd ougK 
to come !) 

My feller kebbige-heads, who look so 

green, 
I vow to gracious thet ef I could dreen 
The world of all its hearers but jest you, 
't would leave 'bout all tha' is wuth talkm' 

to, 
An' you, my ven'able oP frien's, thet show 
Upon your crowns a sprinklin' o' March 

snow, 
Ez ef mild Time had christened every sense 
For wisdom's church o' second innocence, 
Nut Age's winter, no, no sech a thing, 
But jest a kin' o' slippin'-back o' spring, — 
[Sev'ril noses Mowed.] 
We 've gathered here, ez ushle, to decide 
Which is the Lord's an' which is Satan's 

side, 
Coz all the good or evil thet can heppen 
Is 'long o' which on 'em you choose for 

Cappen. 

[Cries 0' " Thet 's so."] 

Aprul 's come back ; the swellin' buds of 

oak 
Dim the fur hillsides with a purplish 

smoke ; 
The brooks are loose an', singing to be seen, 
(Like gals,) make all the hollers soft an* 

green ; 



28o 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



The birds are here, for all the season 's 

late; 
They take the sun's height an' don' never 

wait; 
Soon 'z he officially declares it 's spring 
Their light hearts lift 'em on a north'ard 

wing, 
An' th' ain't an acre, fur ez you can hear, 
Can't by the music tell the time o' year; 
But thet white dove Carliny scared away, 
Five year ago, jes' sech an Aprul day; 
Peace, that we hoped 'ould come an' build 

last year 
An' coo by every housedoor, is n't here, — 
No, nor wun't never be, for all our jaw, 
Till we 're ez brave in pol'tics ez in war ! 
O Lord, ef folks wuz made so 's 't they 

could see 
The begnet-pint there is to an idee ! 

[Sensation.] 
Ten times the danger in 'em th' is in steel; 
They run your soul thru an' you never feel, 
But crawl about an' seem to think you 're 

livin', 
Poor shells o' men, nut wuth the Lord's 

forgivin', 
Tell you come bunt ag'in a real live feet, 
An' go to pieces when you 'd ough' to ect! 
Thet kin' o' begnet 's wut we 're crossin' 

now, 
An' no man, fit to nevvigate a scow, 
'ould stan' expectin' help from Kingdom 

Come, 
While t' other side druv their cold iron 

home. 

My frien's, you never gethered from my 

mouth, 
No, nut one word ag'in the South ez South, 
Nor th' ain't a livin' man, white, brown, 

nor black, 
Gladder 'n wut I should be to take 'em 

back; 
But all I ask of Uncle Sam is fust 
To write up on his door, " No goods on 

trust " ; 

[Cries o' " Thet 's the ticket ! "] 
Give us cash down in ekle laws for all, 
An' they '11 be snug inside afore nex' fall. 
Give wut they ask, an' we shell hev Jama- 

ker, 
Wuth minus some consid'able an acre ; 
Give wut they need, an' we shell git 'fore 

long 
A nation all one piece, rich, peacefle, strong; 



Make 'em Amerikin, an' they '11 begin 
To love their country ez they loved their 

sin ; 
Let 'em stay Southun, an' you 've kep' a 

sore 
Ready to fester ez it done afore. 
No mortle man can boast of perfic' vision, 
But the one moleblin' thing is Indecision, 
An' th' ain't no f utur' for the man nor state 
Thet out of j-u-s-t can't spell great. 
Some folks 'ould call thet reddikle ; do 

you? 
'Twas commonsense afore the war wuz 

thru; 
Thet loaded all our guns an' made 'em 



So 's 't Europe heared 'em clearn acrost 

the creek ; 
" They 're drivin' o' their spiles down now," 

sez she, 
" To the hard grennit o' God's fust idee ; 
Ef they reach thet, Democ'cy need n't fear 
The tallest airthquakes we can git up here." 
Some call 't insultin' to ask ary pledge, 
An' say 't will only set their teeth on edge, 
But folks you 've jest licked, fur 'z I ever 

see, 
Are 'bout ez mad 'z they wal know how to be ; 
It 's better than the Rebs themselves ex- 
pected 
'fore they see Uncle Sam wilt down hen- 

pected; 
Be kind 'z you please, but fustly make 

things fast, 
For plain Truth 's all the kindness thet '11 

last; 
Ef treason is a crime, ez some folks say, 
How could we punish it in a milder way 
Than sayin' to 'em, " Brethren, lookee here, 
We '11 jes' divide things with ye, sheer an' 

sheer, 
An' sence both come o' pooty strong-backed 

daddies, 
You take the Darkies, ez we 've took the 

Paddies ; 
Ign'ant an' poor we took 'em by the hand, 
An' they're the bones an' sinners o' the 

land." 
I ain't o' them thet fancy there 's a loss on 
Every inves'ment thet don't start from 

Bos'on; 
But I know this: our money 's safest trusted 
In sunthin', come wut will, thet can't be 

busted, 
An' thet 's the old Amerikin idee, 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



281 



To make a man a Man an' let him be. 

[Gret applause.] 
Ez for their l'yalty, don't take a goad to 't, 
But I do' want to block their only road 

to't 
By lettin' 'em believe thet they can git 
Mor 'n wut they lost, out of our little wit: 
I tell ye wut, I 'm 'f raid we '11 drif ' to lee- 
ward 
'thout we can put more stiffenin' into 

Seward; 
He seems to think Columby 'd better ect 
Like a scared widder with a boy stiff- 
necked 
Thet stomps an' swears he wun't come in 

to supper; 
She mus' set up for him, ez weak ez 

Tupper, 
Keepin' the Constitootion on to warm, 
Tell he '11 eccept her 'pologies in form : 
The neighbors tell her he 's a cross-grained 

cuss 
Thet needs a hidin' 'fore he comes to wus ; 
" No," sez Ma Seward, " he 's ez good 'z 

the best, 
All he wants now is sugar-plums an' rest; " 
" He sarsed my Pa," sez one ; " He stoned 

my son," 
Another edds. " Oh wal, 't wus jes' his 

fun." 
"He tried to shoot our Uncle Samwell 

dead." 1 

" 'T wuz only tryin' a noo gun he hed." 
" Wal, all we ask 's to hev it understood 
You'll take his gun away from him for 

good; 
We don't, wal, nut exac'ly, like his play, 
Seein' he alius kin' o' shoots our way. 
You kill your fatted calves to no good 

eend, 
'thout his fust sayin', 'Mother, I hev 

sinned! ' " 

[" Amen ! " frum Deac'n Greenleaf.] 

The Pres'dunt he thinks thet the slickest 

plan 
'ould be t' allow thet he \s our on'y man, 
An' thet we fit thru all thet dreffle war 
Jes' for his private glory an' eclor; 
" Nobody ain't a Union man," sez he, 
" 'thout he agrees, thru thick an' thin, with 

me; 
Warn't Andrew Jackson's 'nitials jes' like 

mine ? 
An' ain't thet sunthin like a right divine 



To cut up ez kentenkerous ez I please, 
An' treat your Congress like a nest o' 

fleas ? " 
Wal, I expec' the People would n' care, if 
The question now wuz techin' bank or 

tariff, 
But I conclude they've 'bout made up 

their min' 
This ain't the fittest time to go it blin', 
Nor these ain't metters thet with pol'tics 

swings, 
But goes 'way down amongst the roots o' 

things ; 
Goz Sumner talked o' white washin' one 

day 
They wun't let four years' war be throwed 



" Let the South hev her rights ? " They 

say, " Thet's you ! 
But nut greb hold of other folks's tu." 
Who owns this country, is it they or Andy ? 
Leastways it ough' to be the People and 

he; 
Let him be senior pardner, ef he 's so, 
But let them kin' o' smuggle in ez Co; 

[Laughter.] 
Did he diskiver it ? Consid'ble numbers 
Think thet the job wuz taken by Columbus. 
Did he set tu an' make it wut it is ? 
Ef so, I guess the One-Man-power hez riz. 
Did he put thru the rebbles, clear the 

docket, 
An' pay th' expenses out of his own pocket ? 
Ef thet 's the case, then everythin' I exes 
Is t' hev him come an' pay my ennooal 

texes. [Profoun' sensation.] 

Was 't he thet shou'dered all them million 

guns ? 
Did he lose all the fathers, brothers, sons ? 
Is this ere pop'lar gov'ment thet we run 
A kin' o' sulky, made to kerry one ? 
An' is the country goin' to knuckle down 
To hev Smith sort their letters 'stid o* 

Brown ? 
Who wuz the 'Nited States 'fore Richmon' 

fell? 
Wuz the South needfle their full name to 

spell ? 
An' can't we spell it in thet short-han' way 
Till th' underpinnin' 's settled so 's to 

stay ? 
Who cares for the Resolves of '61, 
Thet tried to coax an airthquake with a 

bun? 
Hez act'ly nothin 1 taken place sence then 



282 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



To lam folks they must hendle fects like 

men ? 
Ain't this the true p'iut ? Did the Rebs 

aecep' 'em ? 
Ef nut, whose fault is 't thet we hev n't 

kep 'em ? 
War n't there two sides ? an' don't it stend 

to reason 
Thet this week's 'Nited States ain't las' 

week's treason ? 
When all these sums is done, with nothin' 

missed, 
An' nut afore, this school '11 be dismissed. 

I knowed ez wal ez though I 'd seen 't with 

eyes 
Thet when the war wuz over copper 'd 

rise, 
An' thet we 'd hev a rile-up in our kettle 
't would need Leviathan's whole skin to 

settle : 
I thought 't would take about a generation 
'fore we could wal begin to be a nation, 
But I allow I never did imegine 
't would be our Pres'dunt thet 'ould drive 

a wedge in 
To keep the split from closin' ef it could, 
An' healin' over with new wholesome wood; 
For th' ain't no chance o' healin' while they 

think 
Thet law an' gov'ment 's only printer's ink; 
I mus' confess I thank him for discoverin' 
The curus way in which the States are sov- 
ereign; 
They ain't nut quite enough so to rebel, 
But, when they fin' it 's costly to raise h — , 
[A groan from Deac'n G.] 

Why, then, for jes' the same superl'tive 

reason, 
They 're 'most too much so to be tetched 

for treason; 
They cant go out, but ef they somehow du, 
Their sovereignty don't noways go out tu; 
The State goes out, the sovereignty don't 

stir, 
But stays to keep the door ajar for her. 
He thinks secession never took 'em out, 
An' mebby he 's correc', but I misdoubt; 
Ef they war'n't out, then why, 'n the name 

o' sin, 
Make all this row 'bout lettin' of 'em in ? 
In law, p'r'aps nut; but there 's a diffur- 

ence, ruther, 
Betwixt your mother-'n-law an' real mother, 
[Derisive cheers.] 



An' I, for one, shall wish they 'd all ben 

som'eres, 
Long 'z U. S. Texes are sech reg'lar comers. 
But, O my patience ! must we wriggle 

back 
Into th' ole crooked, pettyfoggin' track, 
When our artil'ry-wheels a road hev cut 
Stret to our purpose ef we keep the rut ? 
War 's jes' dead waste excep' to wipe the 

slate 
Clean for the cyph'rin' of some nobler fate. 
[Applause.] 
Ez for dependin' on their oaths an' thet, 
't wun't bind 'em mor 'n the ribbin roun' 

my het: 
I heared a fable once from Othniel Starns, 
That pints it slick ez weathercocks do 

barns : 
Onct on a time the wolves hed certing 

rights 
Inside the fold ; they used to sleep there 

nights, 
An', bein' cousins o' the dogs, they took 
Their turns et watchin', reg'lar ez a book; 
But somehow, when the dogs hed gut 

asleep, 
Their love o' mutton beat their love o' 

sheep, 
Till gradilly the shepherds come to see 
Things war'n't agoin' ez they 'd ough' to be; 
So they sent off a deacon to remonstrate 
Along 'th the wolves an' urge 'em to go on 

straight ; 
They did n' seem to set much by the dea- 
con, 
Nor preachin' did n' cow 'em, nut to speak 

on; 
Fin'ly they swore thet they 'd go out an' 

stay, 
An' hev their fill o' mutton every day; 
Then dogs an' shepherds, after much hard 

dammin', 

[Groan from Deac'n G.] 

Turned tu an' give 'em a tormented lam- 
min', 

An' sez, " Ye sha'n't go out, the murrain 
rot ye, 

To keep us wastin' half our time to watch 
ye ! " 

But then the question come, How live to- 
gether 

'thout losin' sleep, nor nary yew nor 
wether ? 

Now there wuz some dogs (noways wuth 
their keep) 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



283 



Thet sheered their cousins' tastes an' 

sheered the sheep ; 
They sez, " Be gin'rous, let 'em swear right 

in, 
An', ef they backslide, let 'em swear ag'in; 
Jes' let 'em put on sheep - skins whilst 

they 're swearin' ; 
To ask for more 'ould be beyond all bear- 
in'." 
" Be gin'rous for yourselves, where you 're 

to pay, 
Thet 's the best prectice," sez a shepherd 

gray;_ 
" Ez for their oaths they wun't be wuth a 

button, 
Long 'z you don't cure 'em o' their taste 

for mutton; 
Th' ain't but one solid way, howe'er you 

puzzle : 
Tell they 're convarted, let 'em wear a 

muzzle." [Cries of " Bully for you ! "] 

I 've noticed thet each half-baked scheme's 
abetters 

Are in the hebbit o' producin' letters 

Writ by all sorts o' never-heared-on fel- 
lers, 

'bout ez oridge'nal ez the wind in bellers; 

I 've noticed, tu, it 's the quack med'cine 
gits 

(An' needs) the grettest heaps o' stiff y kits ; 
[Two tpothekeries goes out.] 

Now, sence I lef off creepin' on all fours, 

I hain't ast no man to endorse my course; 

It 's full ez cheap to be your own endorser, 

An' ef I 've made a cup, I '11 fin' the 
saucer; 

But I've some letters here from t' other side, 

An' them 's the sort thet helps me to decide ; 

Tell me for wut the copper-comp'nies 
hanker, 

An' I '11 tell you jest where it 's safe to 

anchor. [Faint hiss.] 

Fus'ly the Hon'ble B. O. Sawin writes 
Thet for a spell he could n't sleep o' 

nights, 
Puzzlin' which side wuz preudentest to pin 

to, 
Which wuz th' ole homestead, which the 

temp'ry leanto; 
Et fust he j edged 't would right-side-up 

his pan 
To come out ez a 'ridge'nal Union man, 
" But now," he sez, " I ain't nut quite so 

fresh; 



The winnin horse is goin' to be Secesh; 
You might, las' spring, hev eas'ly walked 

the course, 
'fore we contrived to doctor th' Union 

horse ; 
Now we 're the ones to walk aroun' the 

nex' track: 
Jest you take hoi' an' read the follerin' ex- 

trac', 
Out of a letter I received last week 
From an ole frien' thet never sprung a 

leak, 
A Nothun Dem'crat o' th' ole Jarsey blue, 
Born copper-sheathed an' copper-fastened 

tu." 

" These four years past it hez ben tough 
To say which side a feller went for; 
Guideposts all gone, roads muddy 'n' rough, 
An' nothin' duin' wut 't wuz meant for; 
Pickets a-firin' left an' right, 
Both sides a lettin' rip et sight, — 
Life warn't wuth hardly payin' rent for. 

" Columby gut her back up so, 
It warn't no use a-tryin' to stop her, — 
War's emptin's riled her very dough 
An' made it rise an' act improper; 
'T wuz full ez much ez I could du 
To jes' lay low an' worry thru, 
'Thout hevin' to sell out my copper. 

" Afore the war your mod'rit men 
Could set an' sun 'em on the fences, 
Cyph'rin' the chances up, an' then 
Jump off which way bes' paid expenses; 
Sence, 't wuz so resky ary way, 
/ did n't hardly darst to say 
I 'greed with Paley's Evidences. 

[Groan from Deac'n G.] 

" Ask Mac ef try in' to set the fence 
Warn't like bein' rid upon a rail on 't, 
Headin' your party with a sense 
O' bein' tipjint in the tail on 't, 
An' tryin' to think thet, on the whole, 
You kin' o' quasi own your soul 
When Belmont 's gut a bill o' sale on 't ? 
[Three cheers for Grant and Sherman.] 

" Come peace, I sposed thet folks 'ould 

like 
Their pol'tics done ag'in by proxy 
Give their noo loves the bag an' strike 
A fresh trade with their reg'lar doxy; 



284 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



But the drag 's broke, now slavery 's gone, 
An' there 's gret resk they '11 blunder on, 
Ef they ain't stopped, to real Demoe'cy. 

« -^y e > ve g U t an aw f u l row to hoe 
In this 'ere job o' reconstructin' ; 
Folks dunno skurce which way to go, 
Where th' ain't some boghole to be ducked 

in; 
But one thing 's clear; there is a crack, 
Ef we pry hard, 'twixt white an' black, 
Where the ole makebate can be tucked in. 

" No white man sets in airth's broad aisle 

Thet I ain't willin' t' own ez brother, 

An' ef he 's heppened to strike ile, 

I dunno, fin'ly, but I 'd ruther; 

An' Paddies, long 'z they vote all right, 

Though they ain't jest a nat'ral white, 

I hold one on 'em good 'z another. 

[Applause.] 

" Wut is there lef ' I 'd like to know, 
Ef 't ain't the defference o' color, 
To keep up self-respec' an' show 
The human natur' of a fullah ? 
Wut good in bein' white, onless 
It 's fixed by law, nut lef' to guess, 
We 're a heap smarter an' they duller ? 

" Ef we 're to hev our ekle rights, 
't wun't du to 'low no competition; 
Th' ole debt doo us for bein' whites 
Ain't safe onless we stop th' emission 
O' these noo notes, whose specie base 
Is human natur', 'thout no trace 
O' shape, nor color, nor condition. 

[Continood applause.] 

" So fur I 'd writ an' could n' jedge 

Aboard wut boat I 'd best take pessige, 

My brains all mincemeat, 'thout no edge 

Upon 'em more than tu a sessige, 

But now it seems ez though I see 

Sunthin' resemblin' an idee, 

Sence Johnson's speech an' veto message. 

" I like the speech best, I confess, 
The logic, preudence, an' good taste on 't, 
An' it 's so mad, I ruther guess 
There 's some dependence to be placed on' t; 
[Laughter.] 
It 's narrer, but 'twixt you an' me, 
Out o' the allies o' J. D. 
A temp'ry party can be based on 't. 



" Jes' to hold on till Johnson 's thru 
An' dug his Presidential grave is, 
An' then ! — who knows but we could 
slew 

The country roun' to put in ? 

Wun't some folks rare up when we pull 
Out o' their eyes our Union wool 
An' lam 'em wut a p'lit'cle shave is ! 

" Oh, did it seem 'z ef Providunce 
Could ever send a second Tyler ? 
To see the South all back to once, 
Reapin' the spiles o' the Freesiler, 
Is cute ez though an ingineer 
Should claim th' old iron for his sheer 
Coz 't was himself that bust the biler ! " 

[Gret laughter.] 

Thet tells the story ! Thet 's wut we shall 

git 
By tryin' squirtguns on the burnin' Pit; 
For the day never comes when it '11 du 
To kick off Dooty like a worn-out shoe. 
I seem to hear a whisperin' in the air, 
A sighin' like, of unconsoled despair, 
Thet comes from nowhere an' from every- 
where, 
An' seems to say, "Why died we ? warn't 

it, then, 
To settle, once for all, thet men wuz men ? 
Oh, airth's sweet cup snetched from us 

barely tasted, 
The grave's real chill is feelin' life wuz 

wasted ! 
Oh, you we lef, long-lingerin' et the door, 
Lovin' you best, coz we loved Her the 

more, 
Thet Death, not we, had conquered, we 

should feel 
Ef she upon our memory turned her heel, 
An' unregretful throwed us all away 
To flaunt it in a Blind Man's Holiday ! " 

My frien's, I've talked nigh on to long 

enough. 
I hain't no call to bore ye coz ye 're tough; 
My lungs are sound, an' our own v'ice 

delights 
Our ears, but even kebbige-heads hez 

rights. 
It 's the las' time thet I shell e'er address ye, 
But you'll soon fin' some new tormentor: 

bless ye ! 

[Tumult' ous applause and cries of " Go on ! " " Don't 
stop!"] 



TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 



285 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



" The Willows," as was pointed out in the 
introductory note to An Indian-Summer Rev- 
erie, was a clump of trees not far from Elm- 
wood. Lowell took a peculiar pleasure in their 
gnarled and umbrageous forms, and wrote to 
Fields while the volume which took its title 
from the trees was in press : " My heart was 
almost broken yesterday by seeing nailed to 
my willow a board with these words on it, 
' These trees for sale.' The wretch is going 
to peddle them for firewood ! If I had the 
money, I would buy the piece of ground they 
stand on to save them — the dear friends of a 
lifetime. They would be a loss to the town. 
But what can one do ? They belong to a man 
who values them by the cord. I wish Fenn 
had sketched them at least. One of them 
I hope will stand a few years yet in my poem 
— but he might just as well have outlasted 
me and my works, making his own green 
ode every summer." Not all the trees have 
been destroyed, for some yet remain, and it 
is a pleasure to record the refusal of a new 
comer into the neighborhood to have one de- 
stroyed which was inconveniently near the site 
of the house she was to build. She changed, 
instead, the site. 

The varying minds Lowell was in regarding 
the title of the volume may be learned from 
the following letter to C. E. Norton, dated 

Elmwood, October 7, 1868. 
..." The summer is past, the harvest is 
ended," and I have not yet written to you ! 
Well, I was resolved I would not write till 
the printers had in their hands all the copy of 
my new volume of old poems. And that has 
taken longer than I expected. I have been 
Marthaized by many small troubles. But last 



night I fairly ended my work. ... I had de- 
cided to put the " June Idyl " in the forefront 
and call it " A June Idyl, and Other Poems." 
But Fields told me that Whittier's new volume 
was to be called " A Summer Idyl " — so I 
was blocked there. Then I took " Apple- 
dore," merely because it was a pretty name, 
though I did not wish to put that in the van. 
So it was all settled for the second time. Then 
I was suddenly moved to finish my ' ' Voyage 
to Vinland," . . . and, as I liked the poem, 
thought no title so good as " The Voyage 
to Vinland, and Other Poems." But Fields 
would not hear of it, and proposed that I 
should rechristen the Idyl "Elmwood," and 
name the book after that. But the more I 
thought of it the less I liked it. It was throw- 
ing my sanctuary open and making a show- 
house of my hermitage. It was indecent. So 
I fumed and worried. I was riled. Then it 
occurred to me that I had taken the name of 
" June Idyl " as a pis-aller, because in my 
haste I could think of nothing else. Why not 
name it over? So I hit upon "Under the 
Willows," and that it is to be. . . . But it is 
awfully depressing work. They call back so 
many moods, and they are so bad. I think, 
though, there is a suggestion of something 
good in them at least, and they are not silly. 
But how much the public will stand ! I some- 
times wonder they don't drive all us authors 
into a corner and make a battue of the whole 
concern at once. 

In making the collection, the first miscellane- 
ous one since the Poems published in 1849, Low- 
ell gathered not only those published mean- 
while in magazines and other periodicals, but 
went back and recovered some earlier verses. 



TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 
AGRO DOLCE 

The wind is roistering out of doors, 

My windows shake and my chimney roars; 

My Elmwood chimneys seem crooning to 

me, 
As of old, in their moody, minor key, 
And out of the past the hoarse wind blows, 
As I sit in my arm-chair, and toast my toes. 

" Ho ! ho ! nine-and-forty," they seem to 

sing, 
" We saw you a little toddling thing. 



We knew you child and youth and man, 
A wonderful fellow to dream and plan, 
With a great thing always to come, — who 

knows ? 
Well, well! 't is some comfort to toast 

one's toes. 

" How many times have you sat at gaze 
Till the mouldering fire forgot to blaze, 
Shaping among the whimsical coals 
Fancies and figures and shining goals! 
What matters the ashes that cover those ? 
While hickory lasts you can toast your 
toes. 



286 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



" O dream - ship - builder ! where are they 

all, 
Your grand three-deckers, deep - chested 

and tall, 
That should crush the waves under canvas 

piles, 
And anchor at last by the Fortunate Isles ? 
There 's gray in your beard, the years turn 

foes, 
While you muse in your arm-chair, and 

toast your toes." 

I sit and dream that I hear, as of yore, 
My Elm wood chimneys' deep - throated 

roar ; 
If much be gone, there is much remains ; 
By the embers of loss I count my gains, 
You and yours with the best, till the old 

hope glows 
In the fanciful flame, as I toast my toes. 

Instead of a fleet of broad-browed ships, 
To send a child's armada of chips! 
Instead of the great guns, tier on tier, 
A freight of pebbles and grass -blades 

sere! 
" Well, maybe more love with the less gift 

goes," 
I growl, as, half moody, I toast my toes. 

UNDER THE WILLOWS 

Frank-hearted hostess of the field and 

wood, 
Gypsy, whose roof is every spreading tree, 
June is the pearl of our New England 

year. 
Still a surprisal, though expected long, 
Her coming startles. Long she lies in 

wait, 
Makes many a feint, peeps forth, draws 

coyly back, 
Then, from some southern ambush in the 

sky, 
With one great gush of blossom storms the 

world. 
A week ago the sparrow was divine; 
The bluebird, shifting his light load of 

song 
From post to post along the cheerless 

fence, 
Was as a rhymer ere the poet come ; 
But now, oh rapture ! sunshine winged and 

voiced, 



Pipe blown through by the warm wild 

breath of the West 
Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud, 
Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in 

one, 
The bobolink has come, and, like the soul 
Of the sweet season vocal in a bird, 
Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what 
Save June ! Dear June ! Now God oe 

praised for June. 

May is a pious fraud of the almanac, 

A ghastly parody of real Spring 

Shaped out of snow and breathed with 
eastern wind; 

Or if, o'er-confident, she trust the date, 

And, with her handful of anemones, 

Herself as shivery, steal into the sun, 

The season need but turn his hour-glass 
round, 

And Winter suddenly, like crazy Lear, 

Reels back, and brings the dead May in 
his arms, 

Her budding breasts and wan dislustred 
front 

With frosty streaks and drifts of his white 
beard 

All overblown. Then, warmly walled with 
books, 

While my wood-fire supplies the sun's de- 
fect, 

Whispering old forest-sagas in its dreams, 

I take mv May down from the happy 
shelf 

Where perch the world's rare song-birds in 
a row, 

Waiting my choice to open with full breast, 

And beg an alms of springtime, ne'er de- 
nied 

Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh 
woods 

Throb thick with merle and mavis all the 
year. 

July breathes hot, sallows the crispy fields, 
Curls up the wan leaves of the lilac-hedge, 
And every eve cheats us with show of clouds 
That braze the horizon's western rim, or 



Motionless, with heaped canvas drooping 

idly, 
Like a dim fleet by starving men besieged, 
Conjectured half, and half descried afar, 
Helpless of wind, and seeming to slip back 
Adown the smooth curve of the oily sea. 



UNDER THE WILLOWS 



287 



But June is full of invitations sweet, 
Forth from the chimney's yawn and thrice- 
read tomes 
To leisurely delights and sauntering 

thoughts 
That brook no ceiling narrower than the 

blue. 
The cherry, drest for bridal, at my pane 
Brushes, then listens, Will he come f The 

bee, 
All dusty as a miller, takes his toll 
Of powdery gold, and grumbles. What a 

day 
To sun me and do nothing ! Nay, I think 
Merely to bask and ripen is sometimes 
The student's wiser business ; the brain 
That forages all climes to line its cells, 
Ranging both worlds on lightest wings of 

wish, 
Will not distil the juices it has sucked 
To the sweet substance of pellucid thought, 
Except for him who hath the secret learned 
To mix his blood with sunshine, and to 

take 
The winds into his pulses. Hush! 't is 

he! 
My oriole, my glance of summer fire, 
Is come at last, and, ever on the watch, 
Twitches the packthread I had lightly 

wound 
About the bough to help his housekeep- 
ing,— 
Twitches and scouts by turns, blessing his 

luck, 
Yet fearing me who laid it in his way, 
Nor, more than wiser we in our affairs, 
Divines the providence that hides and helps. 
Heave, ho I Heave, ho I he whistles as the 

twine 
Slackens its hold; once more, now! and a 

flash 
Lightens across the sunlight to the elm 
Where his mate dangles at her cup of 

felt. 
Nor all his booty is the thread; he trails 
My loosened thought with it along the 

air, 
And I must follow, would I ever find 
The inward rhyme to all this wealth of 

life. 

I care not how men trace their ancestry, 
To ape or Adam: let them please their 

whim; 
But I in June am midway to believe 



A tree among my far progenitors, 
Such sympathy is mine with all the race, 
Such mutual recognition vaguely sweet 
There is between us. Surely there are 

times 
When they consent to own me of their 

kin, 
And condescend to me, and call me cousin, 
Murmuring faint lullabies of eldest time, 
Forgotten, and yet dumbly felt with thrills 
Moving the lips, though fruitless of all 

words. 
And I have many a lifelong leafy friend, 
Never estranged nor careful of my soul, 
That knows I hate the axe, and welcomes 

me 
Within his tent as if I were a bird, 
Or other free companion of the earth, 
Yet undegenerate to the shifts of men. 
Among them one, an ancient willow, 



Eight balanced limbs, springing at once all 

round 
His deep-ridged trunk with upward slant 

diverse, 
In outline like enormous beaker, fit 
For hand of Jotun, where mid snow and 

mist 
He holds unwieldy revel. This tree, spared, 
I know not by what grace, — for in the 

blood 
Of our New World subduers lingers yet 
Hereditary feud with trees, they being 
(They and the red-man most) our fathers* 

foes, — 
Is one of six, a willow Pleiades, 
The seventh fallen, that lean along the 

brink 
Where the steep upland dips into the marsh, 
Their roots, like molten metal cooled in 

flowing, 
Stiffened in coils and runnels down the 

bank. 
The friend of all the winds, wide-armed he 

towers 
And glints his steely aglets in the sun, 
Or whitens fitfully with sudden bloom 
Of leaves breeze-lifted, much as when a 

shoal 
Of devious minnows wheel from where a 

pike 
Lurks balanced 'neath the lily-pads, and 

whirl 
A rood of silver bellies to the day. 
Alas! no acorn from the British oak 



288 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



'Neath which slim fairies tripping wrought 

those rings 
Of greenest emerald, wherewith fireside life 
Did with the invisible spirit of Nature 

wed, 
Was ever planted here! No darnel fancy 
Might choke one useful blade in Puritan 

fields; 
With horn and hoof the good old Devil 

came, 
The witch's broomstick was not contra- 
band, 
But all that superstition had of fair, 
Or piety of native sweet, was doomed. 
And if there be who nurse unholy faiths, 
Fearing their god as if he were a wolf 
That snuffed round every home and was 

not seen, 
There should be some to watch and keep 

alive 
All beautiful beliefs. And such was that, — 
By solitary shepherd first surmised 
Under Thessalian oaks, loved by some maid 
Of royal stirp, that silent came and van- 
ished, 
As near her nest the hermit thrush, nor 

dared 
Confess a mortal name, — that faith which 

gave 
A Hamadryad to each tree ; and I 
Will hold it true that in this willow dwells 
The open-handed spirit, frank and blithe, 
Of ancient Hospitality, long since, 
With ceremonious thrift, bowed out of 
doors. 

In June 't is good to lie beneath a tree 
While the blithe season comforts every 

sense, 
Steeps all the brain in rest, and heals the 

heart, 
Brimming it o'er with sweetness unawares, 
Fragrant and silent as that rosy snow 
Wherewith the pitying apple-tree fills up 
And tenderly lines some last-year robin's 

nest. 
There muse I of old times, old hopes, old 

friends, — 
Old friends! The writing of those words 

has borne 
My fancy backward to the gracious past, 
The generous past, when all was possible, 
For all was then untried; the years between 
Have taught some sweet, some bitter lessons, 

none 



Wiser than this, — to spend in all things 

else, 

But of old friends to be most miserly. 
Each year to ancient friendships adds a X 

-ring* 
As to an oak, and precious more and more, 
Without deservingness or help of others, 
They grow, and, silent, wider spread, each 

year, 
Their unbought ring of shelter or of shade. 
Sacred to me the lichens on the bark, 
Which Nature's milliners would scrape 



Most dear and sacred every withered limb! 
'T is good to set them early, for our faith 
Pines as we age, and, after wrinkles come, 
Few plant, but water dead ones with vain 
tears. 

This willow is as old to me as life; 
And under it full often have I stretched, 
Feeling the warm earth like a thing alive, 
And gathering virtue in at every pore 
Till it possessed me wholly, and thought 

ceased, 
Or was transfused in something to which 

thought 
Is coarse and dull of sense. Myself was 

lost, 
Gone from me like an ache, and what re- 
mained 
Become a part of the universal joy. 
My soul went forth, and, mingling with the 

tree, 
Danced in the leaves; or, floating in the 

cloud, 
Saw its white double in the stream below; 
Or else, sublimed to purer ecstasy, 
Dilated in the broad blue over all. 
I was the wind that dappled the lush 

grass, 
The tide that crept with coolness to its 

roots, 
The thin-winged swallow skating on the 

air; 
The life that gladdened everything was 

mine. 
Was I then truly all that I beheld ? 
Or is this stream of being but a glass 
Where the mind sees its visionary self, 
As, when the kingfisher flits o'er his bay, 
Across the river's hollow heaven below 
His picture flits, — another, yet the same ? 
But suddenly the sound of human voice 
Or footfall, like the drop a chemist pours, 



UNDER THE WILLOWS 



289 






Doth in opacous cloud precipitate 

The consciousness that seemed but now 

dissolved 
Into an essence rarer than its own, 
And I am narrowed to myself once more. 

For here not long- is solitude secure, 
Nor Fantasy left vacant to her spell. 
Here, sometimes, in this paradise of shade, 
Rippled with western winds, the dusty 

Tramp, 
Seeing the treeless causey burn beyond, 
Halts to unroll his bundle of strange food 
And munch an unearned meal. I cannot 

help 
Liking this creature, lavish Summer's 

bedesman, 
Who from the almshouse steals when nights 

grow warm, 
Himself his large estate and only charge, 
To be the guest of haystack or of hedge, 
Nobly superior to the household gear 
That forfeits us our privilege of nature. 
I bait him with my match-box and my 

pouch, 
Nor grudge the uncostly sympathy of 

smoke, 
His equal now, divinely unemployed. 
Some smack of Robin Hood is in the man, 
Some secret league with wild wood- wander- 
ing things ; 
He is our ragged Duke, our barefoot Earl, 
By right of birth exonerate from toil, 
W"ho levies rent from us his tenants all, 
And serves the state by merely being. 

Here 
The Scissors-grinder, pausing, doffs his hat, 
And lets the kind breeze, with its delicate 

fan, 
Winnow the heat from out his dank gray 

hair, — 
A grimy Ulysses, a much-wandered man, 
Whose feet are known to all the populous 

ways, 
And many men and manners he hath seen, 
Not without fruit of solitary thought. 
He, as the habit is of lonely men, — 
Unused to try the temper of their mind 
In fence with others, — positive and shy, 
Yet knows to put an edge upon his speech, 
Pithily §>axon in unwilling talk. 
Him I entrap with my long-suffering 

knife, 
And, while its poor blade hums away in 



Sharpen my wit upon his gritty mind, 
In motion set obsequious to his wheel, 
And in its quality not much unlike. 

Nor wants my tree more punctual visitors. 
The children, they who are the only rich, 
Creating for the moment, and possessing 
Whate'er they choose to feign, — for still 

with them 
Kind Fancy plays the fairy godmother, 
Strewing their lives with cheap material 
For winged horses and Aladdin's lamps, 
Pure elfin-gold, by manhood's touch pro- 
fane 
To dead leaves disenchanted, — long ago 
Between the branches of the tree fixed 

seats, 
Making an o'erturned box their table. Oft 
The shrilling girls sit here between school 

hours, 
And play at What 's my thought like ? while 

the boys, 
With whom the age chivalric ever bides, 
Pricked on by knightly spur of female eyes, 
Climb high to swing and shout on perilous 

boughs, 
Or, from the willow's armory equipped 
With musket dumb, green banner, edge- 
less sword, 
Make good the rampart of their tree- 
redoubt 
'Gainst eager British storming from below, 
And keep alive the tale of Bunker's Hill. 

Here, too, the men that mend our village 

ways, 
Vexing Macadam's ghost with pounded 

slate, 
Their nooning take ; much noisy talk they 

spend 
On horses and their ills ; and, as John Bull 
Tells of Lord This or That, who was his 

friend, 
So these make boast of intimacies long 
With famous teams, and add large esti- 
mates, 
By competition swelled from mouth to 

mouth, 
Of how much they could draw, till one, ill 

pleased 
To have his legend overbid, retorts : 
"You take and stretch truck-horses in a 

string 
From here to Long Wharf end, one thing 

I know, 



290 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



Not heavy neither, they could never draw, — 
Ensign's long bow ! " Then laughter loud 

and long. 
So they in their leaf -shadowed microcosm 
Image the larger world; for wheresoe'er 
Ten men are gathered, the observant eye 
Will find mankind in little, as the stars 
Glide up and set, and all the heavens re- 
volve 
In the small welkin of a drop of dew. 

I love to enter pleasure by a postern, 
Not the broad popular gate that gulps the 

mob; 
To find my theatres in roadside nooks, 
Where men are actors, and suspect it not; 
Where Nature all unconscious works her 

will, 
And every passion moves with easy gait, 
Unhampered by the buskin or the train. 
Hating the crowd, where we gregarious 

men 
Lead lonely lives, I love society, 
Nor seldom find the best with simple souls 
Unswerved by culture from their native 

bent, 
The ground we meet on being primal man 
And nearer the deep bases of our lives. 

But oh, half heavenly, earthly half, my 

soul, 
Canst thou from those late ecstasies de- 
scend, 
Thy lips still wet with the miraculous wine 
That transubstantiates all thy baser stuff 
To such divinity that soul and sense, 
Once more commingled in their source, are 

lost, — 
Canst thou descend to quench a vulgar 

thirst 
With the mere dregs and rinsings of the 

world ? 
Well, if my nature find her pleasure so, 
I am content, nor need to blush; I take 
My little gift of being clean from God, 
Not haggling for a better, holding it 
Good as was ever any in the world, 
My days as good and full of miracle. 
I pluck my nutriment from any bush, 
Finding out poison as the first men did 
By tasting and then suffering, if I must. 
Sometimes my bush burns, and sometimes 

it is 
A leafless wilding shivering by the wall ; 
But I have known when winter barberries 



Pricked the effeminate palate with sur- 
prise 

Of savor whose mere harshness seemed 
divine. 

Oh, benediction of the higher mood 

And human -kindness of the lower! for 
both 

I will be grateful while I live, nor question 

The wisdom that hath made us what we 
are, 

With such large range as from the ale- 
house bench 

Can reach the stars and be with both at 
home. 

They tell us we have fallen on prosy days, 

Condemned to glean the leavings of earth's 
feast 

Where gods and heroes took delight of 
old; 

But though our lives, moving in one dull 
round 

Of repetition infinite, become 

Stale as a newspaper once read, and though 

History herself, seen in her workshop, 
seem 

To have lost the art that dyed those glori- 
ous panes, 

Rich with memorial shapes of saint and 
sage, 

That pave with splendor the Past's dusky 



Panes that enchant the light of common day 
With colors costly as the blood of kings, 
Till with ideal hues it edge our thought, — 
Yet while the world is left, while nature 

lasts, 
And man the best of nature, there shall be 
Somewhere contentment for these human 

hearts, 
Some freshness, some unused material 
For wonder and for song. I lose myself 
In other ways where solemn guide-posts 

say, 
This way to Knowledge, This way to Repose, 
But here, here only, I am ne'er betrayed, 
For every by-path leads me to my love. 

God's passionless reformers, influences, 
That purify and heal and are not seen, 
Shall man say whence your virtue is, or 

how 
Ye make medicinal the wayside weed ? 
I know that sunshine, through whatever 

rift 



DARA 



291 



How shaped it matters not, upon my walls 
Paints discs as perfect - rounded as its 

source, 
And, like its antitype, the ray divine, 
However finding entrance, perfect still, 
Repeats the image unimpaired of God. 

We, who by shipwreck only find the shores 
Of divine wisdom, can but kneel at first; 
Can but exult to feel beneath our feet, 
That long stretched vainly down the yield- 
ing deeps, 
The shock and sustenance of solid earth; 
Inland afar we see what temples gleam 
Through immemorial stems of sacred 

groves, 
And we conjecture shining shapes there- 
in ; 
Yet for a space we love to wander here 
Among the shells and seaweed of the 
beach. 

So mused I once within my willow-tent 
One brave June morning, when the bluff 

northwest, 
Thrusting aside a dank and snuffling day 
That made us bitter at our neighbors' sins, 
Brimmed the great cup of heaven with 

sparkling cheer 
And roared a lusty stave ; the sliding 

Charles, 
Blue toward the west, and bluer and more 

blue, 
Living and lustrous as a woman's eyes 
Look once and look no more, with south- 
ward curve 
Ran crinkling sunniness, like Helen's hair 
Glimpsed in Elysium, insubstantial gold; 
From blossom-clouded orchards, far away 
The bobolink tinkled; the deep meadows 

flowed 
With multitudinous pulse of light and 

shade 
Against the bases of the southern hills, 
While here and there a drowsy island rick 
Slept and its shadow slept; the wooden 

bridge 
Thundered, and then was silent; on the 

roofs 
The sun-warped shingles rippled with the 

heat; 
Summer on field and hill, in heart and 

brain, 
All life washed clean in this high tide of 

June. 



DARA 



When Persia's sceptre trembled in a hand 
Wilted with harem-heats, and all the land 
Was hovered over by those vulture ills 
That snuff decaying empire from afar, 
Then, with a nature balanced as a star, 
Dara arose, a shepherd of the hills. 

He who had governed fleecy subjects well 
Made his own village by the selfsame 

spell 
Secure and quiet as a guarded fold; 
Then, gathering strength by slow and wise 

degrees 
Under his sway, to neighbor villages 
Order returned, and faith and justice old. 

Now when it fortuned that a king more wise 
Endued the realm with brain and hands 

and eyes, 
He sought on every side men brave and 

just ; 
And having heard our mountain shepherd's 

praise, 
How he refilled the mould of elder days, 
To Dara gave a satrapy in trust. 

So Dara shepherded a province wide, 
Nor in his viceroy's sceptre took more 

pride 
Than in his crook before ; but envy finds 
More food in cities than on mountains 

bare ; 
And the frank sun of natures clear and 

rare 
Breeds poisonous fogs in low and marish 

minds. 

Soon it was hissed into the royal ear, 

That, though wise Dara's province, year 
by year, 

Like a great sponge, sucked wealth and 
plenty up, 

Yet, when he squeezed it at the king's be- 
hest, 

Some yellow drops, more rich than all the 
rest, 

Went to the filling of his private cup. 

For proof, they said, that, wheresoe'er he 

went, 
A chest, beneath whose weight the camel 

bent, - 



292 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



Went with him ; and no mortal eye had 

seen 
What was therein, save only Dara's own ; 
But, when 't was opened, all his tent was 

known 
To glow and lighten with heaped jewels' 

sheen. 

The King set forth for Dara's province 

straight ; 
There, as was fit, outside the city's gate, 
The viceroy met him with a stately train, 
And there, with archers circled, close at 

hand, 
A camel with the chest was seen to stand: 
The King's brow reddened, for the guilt 

was plain. 

" Open me here," he cried, " this treasure- 
chest!" 

*T was done ; and only a worn shepherd's 
vest 

Was found therein. Some blushed and 
hung the head ; 

Not Dara ; open as the sky's blue roof 

He stood, and "O my lord, behold the 
proof 

That I was faithful to my trust," he said. 

" To govern men, lo all the spell I had ! 
My soul in these rude vestments ever clad 
Still to the unstained past kept true and leal, 
Still on these plains could breathe her 

mountain air, 
And fortune's heaviest gifts serenely bear, 
Which bend men from their truth and 

make them reel. 

"For ruling wisely I should have small 

skill, 
Were I not lord of simple Dara still; 
That sceptre kept, I could not lose my 

way." 
Strange dew in royal eyes grew round and 

bright, 
And strained the throbbing lids; before 

'twas night 
Two added provinces blest Dara's sway. 



THE FIRST SNOW-FALL 

One of the " earlier verses " sent to the Anti- 
Slavery Standard. In a letter to Mr. Gay, 
dated Elmwood, December 22, 1849, Lowell 



wrote : " Print that as if you loved it. Let not 
a comma be blundered. Especially I fear they 
will put ' gleaming ' for ' gloaming ' in the first 
line unless you look to it. May you never 
have the key which shall unlock the whole 
meaning of the poem to you ! " 

The snow had begun in the gloaming, 

And busily all the night 
Had been heaping field and highway 

With a silence deep and white. 

Every pine and fir and hemlock 
Wore ermine too dear for an earl, 

And the poorest twig on the elm-tree 
Was ridged inch deep with pearl. 

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara 
Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, 

The stiff rails softened to swan's-down, 
And still fluttered down the snow. 

I stood and watched by the window 
The noiseless work of the sky, 

And the sudden flurries of snow-birds, 
Like brown leaves whirling by. 

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn 

Where a little headstone stood; 
How the flakes were folding it gently, 

As did robins the babes in the wood- 
Up spoke our own little Mabel, 

Saying, " Father, who makes it snow ? " 
And I told of the good All-father 

Who cares for us here below. 

Again I looked at the snow-fall, 
And thought of the leaden sky 

That arched o'er our first great sorrow, 
When that mound was heaped so high. 

I remembered the gradual patience 
That fell from that cloud like snow, 

Flake by flake, healing and hiding 
The scar that renewed our woe. 

And again to the child I whispered, 

" The snow that husheth all, 
Darling, the merciful Father 

Alone can make it fall ! " 

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her; 

And she, kissing back, could not know 
That my kiss was given to her sister, 

Folded close under deepening snow. 



THE SINGING LEAVES 



293 



THE SINGING LEAVES 



A BALLAD 



" What fairings will ye that I bring ? " 
Said the King to his daughters three; 

" For I to Vanity Fair am boun, 
Now say what shall they be ? " 

Then up and spake the eldest daughter, 

That lady tall and grand: 
" Oh, bring me pearls and diamonds great, 

And gold rings for my hand." 

Thereafter spake the second daughter, 

That was both white and red: 
" For me bring silks that will stand alone, 

And a gold comb for my head." 

Then came the turn of the least daughter, 
That was whiter than thistle-down, 

And among the gold of her blithesome hair 
Dim shone the golden crown. 

" There came a bird this morning, 
And sang 'neath my bower eaves, 

Till I dreamed, as his music made me, 
' Ask thou for the Singing Leaves.' " 

Then the brow of the King swelled crimson 

With a flush of angry scorn: 
" Well have ye spoken, my two eldest, 

And chosen as ye were born; 

" But she, like a thing of peasant race, 
That is happy binding the sheaves;" 

Then he saw her dead mother in her face, 
And said, " Thou shalt have thy leaves." 



He mounted and rode three days and nights 

Till he came to Vanity Fair, 
And 't was easy to buy the gems and the 
silk, 

But no Singing Leaves were there. 

Then deep in the greenwood rode he, 

And asked of every tree, 
" Oh, if you have ever a Singing Leaf, 

I pray you give it me ! " 

But the trees all kept their counsel, 
And never a word said they, 



Only there sighed from the pine-tops 
A music of seas far away. 

Only the pattering aspen 

Made a sound of growing rain, 

That fell ever faster and faster, 
Then faltered to silence again. 

" Oh, where shall I find a little foot-page 
That would win both hose and shoon, 

And will bring to me the Singing Leaves 
If they grow under the moon ? " 

Then lightly turned him Walter the page, 

By the stirrup as he ran: 
" Now pledge you me the truesome word 

Of a king and gentleman, 

" That you will give me the first, first thing 

You meet at your castle-gate, 
And the Princess shall get the Singing 
Leaves, 

Or mine be a traitor's fate." 

The King's head dropt upon his breast 

A moment, as it might be; 
'T will be my dog, he thought, and said, 

"My faith I plight to thee." 

Then Walter took from next his heart 

A packet small and thin, 
" Now give you this to the Princess Anne, 

The Singing Leaves are therein." 



As the King rode in at his castle-gate, 

A maiden to meet him ran, 
And " Welcome, father! " she laughed and 
cried 

Together, the Princess Anne. 

"Lo, here the Singing Leaves," quoth he, 
"And woe, but they cost me dear! " 

She took the packet, and the smile 
Deepened down beneath the tear. 

It deepened down till it reached her heart, 

And then gushed up again, 
And lighted her tears as the sudden sun 

Transfigures the summer rain. 

And the first Leaf, when it was opened, 
Sang: " I am Walter the page, 

And the songs I sing 'neath thy window 
Are my only heritage." 



294 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



And the second Leaf sang: "But in the 
land 

That is neither on earth nor sea, 
My lute and I are lords of more 

Than thrice this kingdom's fee." 

And the third Leaf sang, "Be mine! Be 
mine! " 

And ever it sang, " Be mine! " 
Then sweeter it sang and ever sweeter, 

And said, " I am thine, thine, thine! " 

At the first Leaf she grew pale enough, 
At the second she turned aside, 

At the third, 't was as if a lily flushed 
With a rose's red heart's tide. 

" Good counsel gave the bird," said she, 

" I have my hope thrice o'er, 
For they sing to my very heart," she said, 

"And it sings to them evermore." 

She brought to him her beauty and truth, 
But and broad earldoms three, 

And he made her queen of the broader lands 
He held of his lute in fee. 



SEAWEED 

Not always unimpeded can I pray, 
Nor, pitying saint, thine intercession claim ; 
Too closely clings the burden of the day, 
And all the mint and anise that I pay 
But swells my debt and deepens my self- 
blame. 

Shall I less patience have than Thou, who 

know 
That Thou revisit'st all who wait for thee, 
Nor only fill'st the unsounded deeps be- 
low, 
But dost refresh with punctual overflow 
The rifts where unregarded mosses be ? 

The drooping seaweed hears, in night 

abyssed, 
Far and more far the wave's receding 

shocks, 
Nor doubts, for all the darkness and the 

mist, 
That the pale shepherdess will keep her 

tryst, 
And shoreward lead again her foam-fleeced 

flocks. 



For the same wave that rims the Carib 
shore 

With momentary brede of pearl and gold, 

Goes hurrying thence to gladden with its 
roar 

Lorn weeds bound fast on rocks of Labra- 
dor, 

By love divine on one sweet errand rolled. 

And, though Thy healing waters far with- 
draw, 
I, too, can wait and feed on hope of Thee 
And of the dear recurrence of Thy law, 
Sure that the parting grace my morning 

saw 
Abides its time to come in search of me. 



THE FINDING OF THE LYRE 

There lay upon the ocean's shore 
What once a tortoise served to cover; 
A year and more, with rush and roar, 
The surf had rolled it over, 
Had played with it, and flung it by, 
As wind and weather might decide it, 
Then tossed it high where sand-drifts dry 
Cheap burial might provide it. 

It rested there to bleach or tan, 

The rains had soaked, the suns had burned 

it; 
With many a ban the fisherman 
Had stumbled o'er and spurned it; 
And there the fisher-girl would stay, 
Conjecturing with her brother 
How in their play the poor estray 
Might serve some use or other. 

So there it lay, through wet and dry 

As empty as the last new sonnet, 

Till by and by came Mercury, 

And, having mused upon it, 

"Why, here," cried he, "the thing of 

things 
In shape, material, and dimension ! 
Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings, 
A wonderful invention ! " 

So said, so done; the chords he strained, 
And, as his fingers o'er them hovered, 
The shell disdained a soul had gained, 
The lyre had been discovered. 
O empty world that round us lies, 
Dead shell, of soul and thought forsaken, 



AL FRESCO 



2 95 



Brought we but eyes like Mercury's, 
In thee what songs should waken ! 



NEW-YEAR'S EVE, 1850 

This is the midnight of the century, — 

hark ! 
Through aisle and arch of Godminster have 

gone 
Twelve throbs that tolled the zenith of the 

dark, 
And mornward now the starry hands move 

on; 
" Mornward ! " the angelic watchers say^ 
" Passed is the sorest trial; 
No plot of man can stay 
The hand upon the dial; 
Night is the dark stem of the lily Day." 

If we, who watched in valleys here below, 

Toward streaks, misdeemed of morn, our 
faces turned 

When volcan glares set all the east aglow, 

We are not poorer that we wept and 
yearned; 

Though earth swing wide from God's in- 
tent, 

And though no man nor nation 

Will move with full consent 

In heavenly gravitation, 

Yet by one Sun is every orbit bent. 



FOR AN AUTOGRAPH 

Though old the thought and oft exprest, 
'T is his at last who says it best, — 
I '11 try my fortune with the rest. 

Life is a leaf of paper white 
Whereon each one of us may write 
His word or two, and then comes night. 

" Lo, time and space enough," we cry, 
" To write an epic ! " so we try 
Our nibs upon the edge, and die. 

Muse not which way the pen to hold, 
Luck hates the slow and loves the bold, 
Soon come the darkness and the cold. 

Greatly begin ! though thou have time 
But for a line, be that sublime, — 
Not failure, but low aim, is crime. 



Ah, with what lofty hope we came ! 
But we forget it, dream of fame, 
And scrawl, as I do here, a name. 



AL FRESCO 

The dandelions and buttercups 

Gild all the lawn ; the drowsy bee 

Stumbles among the clover-tops, 

And summer sweetens all but me: 

Away, unfruitful lore of books, 

For whose vain idiom we reject 

The soul's more native dialect, 

Aliens among the birds and brooks, 

Dull to interpret or conceive 

What gospels lost the woods retrieve ! 

Away, ye critics, city-bred, 

Who springes set of thus and so, 

And in the first man's footsteps tread, 

Like those who toil through drifted snow ! 

Away, my poets, whose sweet spell 

Can make a garden of a cell ! 

I need ye not, for I to-day 

Will make one long sweet verse of play. 

Snap, chord of manhood's tenser strain ! 
To-day I will be a boy again; 
The mind's pursuing element, 
Like a bow slackened and unbent, 
In some dark corner shall be leant. 
The robin sings, as of old, from the limb ! 
The cat-bird croons in the lilac-bush ! 
Through the dim arbor, himself more dim, 
Silently hops the hermit-thrush, 
The withered leaves keep dumb for him ; 
The irreverent buccaneering bee 
Hath stormed and rifled the nunnery 
Of the lily, and scattered the sacred floor 
With haste - dropt gold from shrine to 

door; 
There, as of yore, 
The rich, milk-tingeing buttercup 
Its tiny polished urn holds up, 
Filled with ripe summer to the edge, 
The sun in his own wine to pledge; 
And our tall elm, this hundredth year 
Doge of our leafy Venice here, 
Who, with an annual ring, doth wed 
The blue Adriatic overhead, 
Shadows with his palatial mass 
The deep canals of flowing grass. 

O unestranged birds and bees ! 
O face of Nature always true ! 



296 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



O never-unsympathizing trees ! 

never-rejecting roof of blue, 
Whose rash disherison never falls 
On us unthinking prodigals, 

Yet who convictest all our ill, 
So grand and unappeasable ! 
Methinks my heart from each of these 
Plucks part of childhood back again, 
Long there imprisoned, as the breeze 
Doth every hidden odor seize 
Of wood and water, hill and plain ; 
Once more am I admitted peer 
In the upper house of Nature here, 
And feel through all my pulses run 
The royal blood of wind and sun. 

Upon these elm-arched solitudes 
No hum of neighbor toil intrudes; 
The only hammer that I hear 
Is wielded by the woodpecker, 
The single noisy calling his 
In all our leaf -hid Sybaris; 
The good old time, close-hidden here, 
Persists, a loyal cavalier, 
While Roundheads prim, with point of fox, 
Probe wainscot-chink and empty box; 
Here no hoarse-voiced iconoclast 
Insults thy statues, royal Past; 
Myself too prone the axe to wield, 

1 touch the silver side of the shield 
With lance reversed, and challenge peace, 
A willing convert of the trees. 

How chanced it that so long I tost 
A cable's length from this rich coast, 
With foolish anchors hugging close 
The beckoning weeds and lazy ooze, 
Nor had the wit to wreck before 
On this enchanted island's shore, 
Whither the current of the sea, 
With wiser drift, persuaded me ? 

Oh, might we but of such rare days 
Build up the spirit's dwelling-place ! 
A temple of so Parian stone 
Would brook a marble god alone, 
The statue of a perfect life, 
Far-shrined from earth's bestaining strife. 
Alas ! though such felicity 
In our vext world here may not be, 
Yet, as sometimes the peasant's hut 
Shows stones which old religion cut 
With text inspired, or mystic sign 
Of the Eternal and Divine, 
Torn from the consecration deep 



Of some fallen nunnery's mossy sleep, 

So, from the ruins of this day 

Crumbling in golden dust away, 

The soul one gracious block may draw, 

Carved with some fragment of the law, 

Which, set in life's prosaic wall, 

Old benedictions may recall, 

And lure some nunlike thoughts to take 

Their dwelling here for memory's sake. 



MASACCIO 

IN THE BRANCACCI CHAPEL 

He came to Florence long ago, 

And painted here these walls, that shone 

For Raphael and for Angelo, 

With secrets deeper than his own, 

Then shrank into the dark again, 

And died, we know not how or when. 

The shadows deepened, and I turned 

Half sadly from the fresco grand; 

" And is this," mused I, " all ye earned, 

High- vaulted brain and cunning hand, 

That ye to greater men could teach 

The skill yourselves could never reach ? " 

" And who were they," I mused, " that 

wrought 
Through pathless wilds, with labor long, 
The highways of our daily thought ? 
Who reared those towers of earliest song 
That lift us from the crowd to peace 
Remote in sunny silences ? " 

Out clanged the Ave Mary bells, 
And to my heart this message came : 
Each clamorous throat among them tells 
What strong-souled martys died in flame 
To make it possible that thou 
Shouldst here with brother sinners bow. 

Thoughts that great hearts once broke for, 

we 
Breathe cheaply in the common air ; 
The dust we trample heedlessly 
Throbbed once in saints and heroes rare, 
Who perished, opening for their race 
New pathways to the commonplace. 

Henceforth, when rings the health to those 
Who live in story and in song, 
O nameless dead, that now repose 



GODMINSTER CHIMES 



297 



Safe in Oblivion's chambers strong, 
One cup of recognition true 
Shall silently be drained to you ! 



WITHOUT AND WITHIN 

"Madrid, January 15, 1879. I wrote some 
verses thirty odd years ago called Without and 
Within, and they originally ended with the 
author's looking- up at the stars through six 
feet of earth and feeling dreadfully bored, 
while a passer-by deciphers the headstone and 
envies the supposed sleeper beneath. I was per- 
suaded to leave out this ending as too grim — 
but I often think of it. They have a fine name 
for this kind of feeling nowadays, and would 
fain make out pessimism to be a monstrous 
birth of our century. I suspect it has always 
been common enough, especially with naughty 
children who get tired of their playthings as 
soon as I do — the absurdity being that then 
we are not content with smashing the toy 
which turns out to be finite — but everything 
else into the bargain." J. R. L. to Miss Grace 
Norton. Letters II. 236. 

My coachman, in the moonlight there, 
Looks through the side-light of the door; 

I hear him with his brethren swear, 
As I could do, — but only more. 

Flattening his nose against the pane, 

He envies me my brilliant lot, 
Breathes on his aching fists in vain, 

And dooms me to a place more hot. 

He sees me in to supper go, 

A silken wonder by my side, 
Bare arms, bare shoulders, and a row 

Of flounces, for the door too wide. 

He thinks how happy is my arm 

'Neath its white-gloved and jewelled 
load; 

And wishes me some dreadful harm, 
Hearing the merry corks explode. 

Meanwhile I inly curse the bore 
Of hunting still the same old coon, 

And envy him, outside the door, 
In golden quiets of the moon. 

The winter wind is not so cold 

As the bright smile he sees me win, 

Nor the host's oldest wine so old 
As our poor gabble sour and thin. 



I envy him the ungyved prance 

With which his freezing feet he warms, 

And drag my lady's-chains and dance 
The galley-slave of dreary forms. 

Oh, could he have my share of din, 
And I his quiet ! — past a doubt 

'T would still be one man bored within, 
And just another bored without. 

Nay, when, once paid my mortal fee, 
Some idler on my headstone grim 

Traces the moss-blurred name, will he 
Think me the happier, or I him ? 



GODMINSTER CHIMES 

WRITTEN IN AID OF A CHIME OF BELLS 
FOR CHRIST CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE 

Godminster ? Is it Fancy's play ? 

I know not, but the word 
Sings in my heart, nor can I say 

Whether 't was dreamed or heard; 
Yet fragrant in my mind it clings 

As blossoms after rain, 
And builds of half-remembered things 

This vision in my brain. 

Through aisles of long-drawn centuries 

My spirit walks in thought, 
And to that symbol lifts its eyes 

Which God's own pity wrought; 
From Calvary shines the altar's gleam, 

The Church's East is there, 
The Ages one great minster seem, 

That throbs with praise and prayer. 

And all the way from Calvary down 

The carven pavement shows 
Their graves who won the martyr's crown 

And safe in God repose; 
The saints of many a warring creed 

Who now in heaven have learned 
That all paths to the Father lead 

Where Self the feet have spurned. 

And, as the mystic aisles I pace, 

By aureoled workmen built, 
Lives ending at the Cross I trace 

Alike through grace and guilt; 
One Mary bathes the blessed feet 

With ointment from her eyes, 



298 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



With spikenard one, and both are sweet, 
For both are sacrifice. 

Moravian hymn and Roman chant 

In one devotion blend, 
To speak the soul's eternal want 

Of Him, the inmost friend; 
One prayer soars cleansed with martyr 
fire, 

One choked with sinner's tears, 
In heaven both meet in one desire, 

And God one music hears. 

Whilst thus I dream, the bells clash out 

Upon the Sabbath air, 
Each seems a hostile faith to shout, 

A selfish form of prayer; 
My dream is shattered, yet who knows 

But in that heaven so near 
These discords find harmonious close 

In God's atoning ear ? 

O chime of sweet Saint Charity, 

Peal soon that Easter morn 
When Christ for all shall risen be, 

And in all hearts new-born ! 
That Pentecost when utterance clear 

To all men shall be given, 
When all shall say My Brother here, 

And hear My Son in heaven ! 



THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 

Who hath not been a poet ? Who hath not, 
With life's new quiver full of winged 

years, 
Shot at a venture, and then, following on, 
Stood doubtful at the Parting of the Ways ? 

There once I stood in dream, and as I 



Looking this way and that, came forth 

to me 
The figure of a woman veiled, that said, 
" My name is Duty, turn and follow me ; " 
Something there was that chilled me in 

her voice; 
I felt Youth's hand grow slack and cold in 

mine, 
As if to be withdrawn, and I exclaimed: 
" Oh, leave the hot wild heart within my 

breast ! 
Duty conies soon enough, too soon comes 

Death; 



This slippery globe of life whirls of itself, 
Hasting our youth away into the dark; 
These senses, quivering with electric heats, 
Too soon will show, like nests on wintry 

boughs 
Obtrusive emptiness, too palpable wreck, 
Which whistling north-winds line with 

downy snow 
Sometimes, or fringe with foliaged rime, 

in vain, 
Thither the singing birds no more return." 

Then glowed to me a maiden from the 

left, 
With bosom half disclosed, and naked 

arms 
More white and undulant than necks of 

swans; 
And all before her steps an influence ran 
Warm as the whispering South that opens 

buds 
And swells the laggard sails of Northern 

May. 
"I am called Pleasure, come with me!" 

she said, 
Then laughed, and shook out sunshine from 

her hair, 
Nor only that, but, so it seemed, shook out 
All memory too, and all the moonlit past, 
Old loves, old aspirations, and old dreams, 
More beautiful for being old and gone. 

So we two went together; downward 

sloped 
The path through yellow meads, or so I 

dreamed, 
Yellow with sunshine and young green, 

but I 
Saw naught nor heard, shut up in one close 

j°y; 

I only felt the hand within my own, 
Transmuting all my blood to golden fire, 
Dissolving all my brain in throbbing mist. 

Suddenly shrank the hand; suddenly burst 
A cry that split the torpor of my brain, 
And as the first sharp thrust of lightning 

loosens 
From the heaped cloud its rain, loosened 

my sense: 
"Save me!" it thrilled; "oh, hide me! 

there is Death ! 
Death the divider, the unmerciful, 
That digs his pitfalls under Love and 

Youth, 



THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 



299 



And covers Beauty up in the cold ground; 
Horrible Death ! bringer of endless dark; 
Let him not see me ! hide me in thy 

breast ! " 
Thereat I strove to clasp her, but my arms 
Met only what slipped crumbling down, 

and fell, 
A handful of gray ashes, at my feet. 

I would have fled, I would have followed 

back 
That pleasant path we came, but all was 

changed; 
Rocky the way, abrupt, and hard to find; 
Yet I toiled on, and, toiling on, I thought, 
" That way lies Youth, and Wisdom, and 

all Good; 
For only by unlearning Wisdom comes 
And climbing backward to diviner Youth; 
What the world teaches profits to the 

world, 
What the soul teaches profits to the soul, 
Which then first stands erect with God- 
ward face, 
When she lets fall her pack of withered 

facts, 
The gleanings of the outward eye and 

ear, 
And looks and listens with her finer sense; 
Nor Truth nor Knowledge cometh from 

without." 

After long, weary days I stood again 
And waited at the Parting of the Ways ; 
Again the figure of a woman veiled 
Stood forth and beckoned, and I followed 

now: 
Down to no bower of roses led the path, 
But through the streets of towns where 

chattering Cold 
Hewed wood for fires whose glow was 

owned and fenced, 
Where Nakedness wove garments of warm 

wool 
Not for itself; — or through the fields it 

led 
Where Hunger reaped the unattainable 

grain, 
Where idleness enforced saw idle lands, 
Leagues of unpeopled soil, the common 

earth, 
Walled round with paper against God and 

Man. 
"I cannot look," I groaned, "at only 

these ; 



The heart grows hardened with perpetual 

wont, 
And palters with a feigned necessity, 
Bargaining with itself to be content; 
Let me behold thy face." 

The Form replied: 
" Men follow Duty, never overtake ; 
Duty nor lifts her veil nor looks behind." 
But, as she spake, a loosened lock of hair 
Slipped from beneath her hood, and I, who 

looked 
To see it gray and thin, saw amplest gold; 
Not that dull metal dug from sordid earth, 
But such as the retiring sunset flood 
Leaves heaped on bays and capes of island 

cloud. 
" O Guide divine," I prayed, " although not 

yet 
I may repair the virtue which I feel 
Gone out at touch of untuned things and 

foul 
With draughts of Beauty, yet declare how 



" Faithless and faint of heart," the voice 

returned, 
" Thou seest no beauty save thou make it 

first; 
Man, Woman, Nature each is but a glass 
Where the soul sees the image of herself, 
Visible echoes, offsprings of herself. 
But, since thou need'st assurance of how 

soon, 
Wait till that angel comes who opens all, 
The reconciler, he who lifts the veil, 
The reuniter, the rest-bringer, Death." 

I waited, and methought he came; but 

how, 
Or in what shape, I doubted, for no sign, 
By touch or mark, he gave me as he 



Only I knew a lily that I held 

Snapt short below the head and shrivelled 

up; 
Then turned my Guide and looked at me 

unveiled, 
And I beheld no face of matron stern, 
But that enchantment I had followed erst, 
Only more fair, more clear to eye and brain, 
Heightened and chastened by a household 

charm; 
She smiled, and " Which is fairer," said 

her eyes, 
" The hag's unreal Florimel or mine ? " 



3°° 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



ALADDIN 

When I was a beggarly boy, 

And lived in a cellar damp, 
I had not a friend nor a toy, 

But I had Aladdin's lamp; 
When I could not sleep for the cold, 

I had fire enough in my brain, 
And builded, with roofs of gold, 

My beautiful castles in Spain ! 

Since then I have toiled day and night, 

I have money and power good store, 
But I 'd give all my lamps of silver bright 

For the one that is mine no more; 
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose, 

You gave, and may snatch again; 
I have nothing 't would pain me to lose, 

For I own no more castles in Spain ! 



AN INVITATION 

to j[ohn] f[rancis] h[eath] 

Nine years have slipt like hour-glass sand 
From life's still-emptying globe away, 
Since last, dear friend, 1 clasped your 

hand, 
And stood upon the impoverished land, 
Watching the steamer down the bay. 

I held the token which you gave, 
While slowly the smoke-pennon curled 
O'er the vague rim 'tween sky and wave, 
And shut the distance like a grave, 
Leaving me in the colder world; 

The old, worn world of hurry and heat, 
The young, fresh world of thought and 

scope ; 
While you, where beckoning billows fleet 
Climb far sky-beaches still and sweet, 
Sank wavering down the ocean-slope. 

You sought the new world in the old, 
I found the old world in the new, 
All that our human hearts can hold, 
The inward world of deathless mould, 
The same that Father Adam knew. 

He needs no ship to cross the tide, 
Who, in the lives about him, sees 
Fair window-prospects opening wide 



O'er history's fields on every side, 
To Ind and Egypt, Rome and Greece. 

Whatever moulds of various brain 
E'er shaped the world to weal or woe, 
Whatever empires' wax and wane, 
To him that hath not eyes in vain, 
Our village-microcosm can show. 

Come back our ancient walks to tread, 
Dear haunts of lost or scattered friends, 
Old Harvard's scholar-factories red, 
Where song and smoke and laughter sped 
The nights to proctor-haunted ends. 

Constant are all our former loves, 
Unchanged the icehouse-girdled pond, 
Its hemlock glooms, its shadowy coves, 
Where floats the coot and never moves, 
Its slopes of long-tamed green beyond. 

Our old familiars are not laid, 

Though snapt our wands and sunk our 

books; 
They beckon, not to be gainsaid, 
Where, round broad meads that mowers 

wade, 
The Charles his steel-blue sickle crooks. 

Where, as the cloudbergs eastward blow, 
From glow to gloom the hillsides shift 
Their plumps of orchard-trees arow, 
Their lakes of rye that wave and flow, 
Their snowy whiteweed's summer drift. 

There have we watched the West unfurl 
A cloud Byzantium newly born, 
With flickering spires and domes of pearl, 
And vapory surfs that crowd and curl 
Into the sunset's Golden Horn. 

There, as the flaming Occident 
Burned slowly down to ashes gray, 
Night pitched o'erhead her silent tent, 
And glimmering gold from Hesper sprent 
Upon the darkened river lay, 

Where a twin sky but just before 
Deepened, and double swallows skimmed, 
And from a visionary shore 
Hung visioned trees, that more and more 
Grew dusk as those above were dimmed. 

Then eastward saw we slowly grow 
Clear-edged the lines of roof and spire, 



THE NOMADES 



301 



While great elm-masses blacken slow, 
And linden-ricks their round heads show 
Against a flush of widening fire. 

Doubtful at first and far away, 

The moon-flood creeps more wide and 

wide; 
Up a ridged beach of cloudy gray, 
Curved round the east as round a bay, 
It slips and spreads its gradual tide. 

Then suddenly, in lurid mood, 
The disk looms large o'er town and field 
As upon Adam, red like blood, 
'Tween him and Eden's happy wood, 
Glared the commissioned angel's shield. 

Or let us seek the seaside, there 
To wander idly as we list, 
Whether, on rocky headlands bare, 
Sharp cedar-horns, like breakers, tear 
The trailing fringes of gray mist, 

Or whether, under skies full flown, 
The brightening surfs, with foamy din, 
Their breeze-caught forelocks backward 

blown, 
Against the beach's yellow zone 
Curl slow, and plunge forever in. 

And, as we watch those canvas towers 
That lean along the horizon's rim, 
" Sail on," I'll say; "may sunniest hours 
Convoy you from this land of ours, 
Since from my side you bear not him ! " 

For years thrice three, wise Horace said, 
A poem rare let silence bind ; 
And love may ripen in the shade, 
Like ours, for nine long seasons laid 
In deepest arches of the mind. 

Come back ! Not ours the Old World's 

good, 
The Old World's iU, thank God, not ours ; 
But here, far better understood, 
The days enforce our native mood, 
And challenge all our manlier powers. 

Kindlier to me the place of birth 
That first my tottering footsteps trod ; 
There may be fairer spots of earth, 
But all their glories are not worth 
The virtue in the native sod. 



Thence climbs an influence more benign 
Through pulse and nerve, through heart 

and brain ; 
Sacred to me those fibres fine 
That first clasped earth. Oh, ne'er be 

mine 
The alien sun and alien rain ! 

These nourish not like homelier glows 
Or waterings of familiar skies, 
And nature fairer blooms bestows 
On the heaped hush of wintry snows, 
In pastures dear to childhood's eyes, 

Than where Italian earth receives 
The partial sunshine's ampler boons, 
Where vines carve friezes 'neath the eaves, 
And, in dark firmaments of leaves, 
The orange lifts its golden moons. 

THE NOMADES 

What Nature makes in any mood 
To me is warranted for good, 
Though long before I learned to see 
She did not set us moral theses, 
And scorned to have her sweet caprices 
Strait-waistcoated in you or me. 

I, who take root and firmly cling, 
Thought fixedness the only thing ; 
Why Nature made the butterflies, 
(Those dreams of wings that float and 

hover 
At noon the slumberous poppies over,) 
Was something hidden from mine eyes, 

Till once, upon a rock's brown bosom, 
Bright as a thorny cactus-blossom, 
I saw a butterfly at rest ; 
Then first of both I felt the beauty; 
The airy whim, the grim-set duty, 
Each from the other took its best. 

Clearer it grew than winter sky 
That Nature still had reasons why ; 
And, shifting sudden as a breeze, 
My fancy found no satisfaction, 
No antithetic sweet attraction, 
So great as in the Nomades. 

Scythians, with Nature not at strife, 
Light Arabs of our complex life, 
They build no houses, plant no mills 



3° 2 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



To utilize Time's sliding river, 
Content that it flow waste forever, 
If they, like it, may have their wills. 

An hour they pitch their shifting tents 
In thoughts, in feelings, and events ; 
Beneath the palm-trees, on the grass, 
They sing, they dance, make love, and 

chatter, 
Vex the grim temples with their clatter, 
And make Truth's fount their looking- 
glass. 

A picnic life ; from love to love, 
From faith to faith they lightly move, 
And yet, hard-eyed philosopher, 
The flightiest maid that ever hovered 
To me your thought-webs fine discovered, 
No lens to see them through like her. 

So witchingly her finger-tips 

To Wisdom, as away she trips, 

She kisses, waves such sweet farewells 

To Duty, as she laughs " To-morrow ! " 

That both from that mad contrast borrow 

A perfectness found nowhere else. 

The beach-bird on its pearly verge 
Follows and flies the whispering surge, 
While, in his tent, the rock-stayed shell 
Awaits the flood's star-timed vibrations, 
And both, the flutter and the patience, 
The sauntering poet loves them well. 

Fulfil so much of God's decree 
As works its problem out in thee, 
Nor dream that in thy breast alone 
The conscience of the changeful seasons, 
The Will that in the planets reasons 
With space-wide logic, has its throne. 

Thy virtue makes not vice of mine, 
Unlike, but none the less divine ; 
Thy toil adorns, not chides, my play ; 
Nature of sameness is so chary, 
With such wild whim the freakish fairy 
Picks presents for the christening-day. 



SELF-STUDY 

A presence both by night and day, 
That made my life seem just begun, 

Yet scarce a presence, rather say 
The warning aureole of one. 



And yet I felt it everywhere ; 

Walked I the woodland's aisles along, 
It seemed to brush me with its hair ; 

Bathed I, I heard a mermaid's song. 

How sweet it was ! A buttercup 
Could hold for me a day's delight, 

A bird could lift my fancy up 

To ether free from cloud or blight. 

Who was the nymph ? Nay, I will see, 
Methought, and I will know her near; 

If such, divined, her charm can be, 
Seen and possessed, how triply dear! 

So every magic art I tried, 

And spells as numberless as sand, 

Until, one evening, by my side 
I saw her glowing fulness stand. 

I turned to clasp her, but " Farewell," 
Parting she sighed, " we meet no more; 

Not by my hand the curtain fell 

That leaves you conscious, wise, and poor. 

" Since you have found me out, I go ; 

Another lover I must find, 
Content his happiness to know, 

Nor strive its secret to unwind." 



PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE 

In 1854 Lowell contributed to The Crayon, 
then just started by W. J. Stillman, a poem, 
My Appledore Gallery, which reappears in part 
in the following poem under a slightly changed 
title. In sending the first portion to Mr. Still- 
man, he wrote : " You may add a note, if you 
like, saying that Appledore is one of the Isles 
of Shoals, off Portsmouth, N. H., discovered by 
the great Captain Smith, and once named after 
him. A cairn on the apex of Appledore is 
said to be of his building." 



A heap of bare and splintery crags 
Tumbled about by lightning and frost, 
With rifts and chasms and storm-bleached 

jags, 
That wait and growl for a ship to be lost; 
No island, but rather the skeleton 
Of a wrecked and vengeance-smitten one, 
Where, aeons ago, with half-shut eye, 
The sluggish saurian crawled to die, 
Gasping under titanic ferns; 



PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE 



303 



Ribs of rock that seaward jut, 

Granite shoulders and boulders and snags, 

Round which, though the winds in heaven 

be shut, 
The nightmared ocean murmurs and yearns, 
Welters, and swashes, and tosses, and turns, 
And the dreary black seaweed lolls and 



Only rock from shore to shore, 

Only a moan through the bleak clefts 
blown, 

With sobs in the rifts where the coarse kelp 
shifts, 

Falling and lifting, tossing and drifting, 

And under all a deep, dull roar, 

Dying and swelling, forevermore, — 

Rock and moan and roar alone, 

And the dread of some nameless thing un- 
known, 

These make Appledore. 

These make Appledore by night: 

Then there are monsters left and right; 

Every rock is a different monster; 

All you have read of, fancied, dreamed, 

When you waked at night because you 
screamed, 

There they lie for half a mile, 

Jumbled together in a pile, 

And (though you know they never once 
stir) 

If you look long, they seem to be moving 

Just as plainly as plain can be, 

Crushing and crowding, wading and shov- 
ing 

Out into the awful sea, 

Where you can hear them snort and spout 

With pauses between, as if they were listen- 
ing, 

Then tumult anon when the surf breaks 
glistening 

In the blackness where they wallow about. 



All this you would scarcely comprehend, 
Should you see the isle on a sunny day ; 
Then it is simple enough in its way, — 
Two rocky bulges, one at each end, 
With a smaller bulge and a hollow between; 
Patches of whortleberry and bay; 
Accidents of open green, 
Sprinkled with loose slabs square and gray, 
Like graveyards for ages deserted; a few 
Unsocial thistles ; an elder or two, 
Foamed over with blossoms white as spray ; 



And on the whole island never a tree 
Save a score of sumachs, high as your knee, 
That crouch in hollows where they may, 
(The cellars where once stood a village, 

men say,) 
Huddling for warmth, and never grew 
Tall enough for a peep at the sea; 
A general dazzle of open blue; 
A breeze always blowing and playing rat- 
tat 
With the bow of the ribbon round your hat; 
A score of sheep that do nothing but stare 
Up or down at you everywhere; 
Three or four cattle that chew the cud 
Lying about in a listless despair; 
A medrick that makes you look overhead 
With short, sharp scream, as he sights his 

prey, 
And, dropping straight and swift as lead, 
Splits the water with sudden thud; — 
This is Appledore by day. 

A common island, you will say; 
But stay a moment: only climb 
Up to the highest rock of the isle, 
Stand there alone for a little while, 
And with gentle approaches it grows sub- 
lime, 
Dilating slowly as you win 
A sense from the silence to take it in. 
So wide the loneness, so lucid the air, 
The granite beneath you so savagely bare, 
You well might think you were looking 

down 
From some sky-silenced mountain's crown, 
Whose waist-belt of pines is wont to tear 
Locks of wool from the topmost cloud. 
Only be sure you go alone, 
For Grandeur is inaccessibly proud, 
And never yet has backward thrown 
Her veil to feed the stare of a crowd; 
To more than one was never shown 
That awful front, nor is it fit 
That she, Cothurnus-shod, stand bowed 
Until the self-approving pit 
Enjoy the gust of its own wit 
In babbling plaudits cheaply loud; 
She hides her mountains and her sea 
From the harriers of scenery, 
Who hunt down sunsets, and huddle and 

bay, 
Mouthing and mumbling the dying day. 

Trust me, 't is something to be cast 
Face to face with one's Self at last, 



3<H 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



To be taken out of the fuss and strife, 
The endless clatter of plate and knife, 
The bore of books and the bores of the 

street, 
From the singular mess we agree to call 

Life, 
Where that is best which the most fools 

vote is, 
And planted firm on one's own two feet 
So nigh to the great warm heart of God, 
You almost seem to feel it beat 
Down from the sunshine and up from the 

sod; 
To be compelled, as it were, to notice 
All the beautiful changes and chances 
Through which the landscape flits and 

glances, 
And to see how the face of common day- 
Is written all over with tender histories, 
When you study it that intenser way 
In which a lover looks at his mistress. 

Till now you dreamed not what could be 

done 
With a bit of rock and a ray of sun ; 
But look, how fade the lights and shades 
Of keen bare edge and crevice deep ! 
How doubtfully it fades and fades, 
And glows again, yon craggy steep, 
O'er which, through color's dreamiest 

grades, 
The musing sunbeams pause and creep ! 
Now pink it blooms, now glimmers gray, 
Now shadows to a filmy blue, 
Tries one, tries all, and will not stay, 
But flits from opal hue to hue, 
And runs through every tenderest range 
Of change that seems not to be change, 
So rare the sweep, so nice the art, 
That lays no stress on any part, 
But shifts and lingers and persuades; 
So soft that sun-brush in the west, 
That asks no costlier pigments' aids, 
But mingling knobs, flaws, angles, dints, 
Indifferent of worst or best, 
Enchants the cliffs with wraiths and hints 
And gracious preludings of tints, 
Where all seems fixed, yet all evades, 
And indefinably pervades 
Perpetual movement with perpetual rest ! 



Away northeast is Boone Island light; 
You might mistake it for a ship, 
Only it stands too plumb upright, 



And like the others does not slip 
Behind the sea's unsteady brink; 
Though, if a cloud-shade chance to dip 
Upon it a moment, 't will suddenly sink, 
Levelled and lost in the darkened main, 
Till the sun builds it suddenly up again, 
As if with a rub of Aladdin's lamp. 
On the mainland you see a misty camp 
Of mountains pitched tumultuously: 
That one looming so long and large 
Is Saddleback, and that point you see 
Over yon low and rounded marge, 
Like the boss of a sleeping giant's targe 
Laid over his breast, is Ossipee; 
That shadow there may be Kearsarge; 
That must be Great Haystack; I love 

these names, 
Wherewith the lonely farmer tames 
Nature to mute companionship 
With his own mind's domestic mood, 
And strives the surly world to clip 
In the arms of familiar habitude. 
'T is well he could not contrive to make 
A Saxon of Agamenticus : 
He glowers there to the north of us, 
Wrapt in his blanket of blue haze, 
Unconvertibly savage, and scorns to take 
The white man's baptism or his ways. 
Him first on shore the coaster divines 
Through the early gray, and sees him 

shake 
The morning mist from his scalp-lock of 

pines ; 
Him first the skipper makes out in the 

west, 
Ere the earliest sunstreak shoots tremu- 
lous, 
Plashing with orange the palpitant lines 
Of mutable billow, crest after crest, 
And murmurs Agamenticus ! 
As if it were the name of a saint. 
But is that a mountain playing cloud, 
Or a cloud playing mountain, just there, 

so faint ? 
Look along over the low right shoulder 
Of Agamenticus into that crowd 
Of brassy thunderheads behind it; 
Now you have caught it, but, ere you are 

older 
By half an hour, you will lose it and find it 
A score of times; while you look't is gone, 
And, just as you 've given it up, anon 
It is there again, till your weary eyes 
Fancy they see it waver and rise, 
With its brother clouds; it is Agiochook, 



PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE 



3o5 



There if you seek not, and gone if you 

look, 
Ninety miles off as the eagle flies. 

But mountains make not all the shore 
The mainland shows to Appledore; 
Eight miles the heaving water spreads 
To a long, low coast with beaches and 



That run through unimagined mazes, 
As the lights and shades and magical hazes 
Put them away or bring them near, 
Shimmering, sketched out for thirty miles 
Between two capes that waver like threads, 
And sink in the ocean, and reappear, 
Crumbled and melted to little isles, 
With filmy trees, that seem the mere 
Half -fancies of drowsy atmosphere; 
And see the beach there, where it is 
Flat as a threshing-floor, beaten and packed 
With the flashing flails of weariless seas, 
How it lifts and looms to a precipice, 
O'er whose square front, a dream, no 

more, 
The steepened sand-stripes seem to pour, 
A murmurless vision of cataract; 
You almost fancy you hear a roar, 
Fitful and faint from the distance wander- 
ing; 
But 't is only the blind old ocean maunder- 
ing, 
Raking the shingle to and fro, 
Aimlessly clutching and letting go 
The kelp-haired sedges of Appledore, 
Slipping down with a sleepy forgetting, 
And anon his ponderous shoulder setting, 
With a deep, hoarse pant against Apple- 
dore. 



Eastward as far as the eye can see, 
Still eastward, eastward, endlessly, 
The sparkle and tremor of purple sea 
That rises before you, a flickering hill, 
On and on to the shut of the sky, 
And beyond, you fancy it sloping until 
The same multitudinous throb and thrill 
That vibrate under your dizzy eye 
In ripples of orange and pink are sent 
Where the poppied sails doze on the yard, 
And the clumsy junk and proa lie 
Sunk deep with precious woods and nard, 
'Mid the palmy isles of the Orient. 
Those leaning towers of clouded white 
On the farthest brink of doubtful ocean, 



That shorten and shorten out of sight, 
Yet seem on the selfsame spot to stay, 
Receding with a motionless motion, 
Fading to dubious films of gray, 
Lost, dimly found, then vanished wholly, 
Will rise again, the great world under, 
First films, then towers, then high-heaped 

clouds, 
Whose nearing outlines sharpen slowly 
Into tall ships with cobweb shrouds, 
That fill long Mongol eyes with wonder, 
Crushing the violet wave to spray 
Past some low headland of Cathay; — 
What was that sigh which seemed so near, 
Chilling your fancy to the core ? 
'T is only the sad old sea you hear, 
That seems to seek forevermore 
Something it cannot find, and so, 
Sighing, seeks on, and tells its woe 
To the pitiless breakers of Appledore. 



How looks Appledore in a storm ? 

I have seen it when its crags seemed 

frantic, 
Butting against the mad Atlantic, 
When surge on surge would heap enorme, 
Cliffs of emerald topped with snow, 
That lifted and lifted, and then let go 
A great white avalanche of thunder, 
A grinding, blinding, deafening ire 
Monadnock might have trembled under; 
And the island, whose rock-roots pierce 

below 
To where they are warmed with the cen- 
tral fire, 
You could feel its granite fibres racked, 
As it seemed to plunge with a shudder 

and thrill 
Right at the breast of the swooping hill, 
And to rise again snorting a cataract 
Of rage-froth from every cranny and ledge, 
While the sea drew its breath in hoarse 
and deep, 
And the next vast breaker curled its edge, 
Gathering itself for a mightier leap. 

North, east, and south there are reefs and 
breakers 
You would never dream of in smooth 
weather, 
That toss and gore the sea for acres, 

Bellowing and gnashing and snarling to- 
gether; 
Look northward, where Duck Island lies, 



306 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



And over its crown you will see arise, 
Against a background of slaty skies, 

A row of pillars still and white, 

That glimmer, and then are gone from 
sight, 
As if the moon should suddenly kiss, 

While you crossed the gusty desert by 
night, 
The long colonnades of Persepolis; 
Look southward for White Island light, 

The lantern stands ninety feet o'er the 
tide; 
There is first a half-mile of tumult and 

fight, 
Of dash and roar and tumble and fright, 

And surging bewilderment wild and wide, 
Where the breakers struggle left and right, 

Then a mile or more of rushing sea, 
And then the lighthouse slim and lone; 
And whenever the weight of ocean is 

thrown 
Full and fair on White Island head, 

A great mist-jotun you will see 

Lifting himself up silently 
High and huge o'er the lighthouse top, 
With hands of wavering spray outspread, 

Groping after the little tower, 

That seems to shrink and shorten and 
cower, 
Till the monster's arms of a sudden drop, 

And silently and fruitlessly 

He sinks back into the sea. 

You, meanwhile, where drenched you stand, 
Awaken once more to the rush and roar, 

And on the rock-point tighten your hand, 

As you turn and see a valley deep, 
That was not there a moment before, 

Suck rattling down between you and a heap 
Of toppling billow, whose instant fall 
Must sink the whole island once for all, 

Or watch the silenter, stealthier seas 

Feeling their way to you more and more ; 

If they once should clutch you high as the 
knees, 

They would whirl you down like a sprig of 
kelp, 

Beyond all reach of hope or help ; — 
And such in a storm is Appledore. 



'T is the sight of a lifetime to behold 
The great shorn sun as you see it now, 
Across eight miles of undulant gold 
That widens landward, weltered and rolled, 



With freaks of shadow and crimson stains; 

To see the solid mountain brow 

As it notches the disk, and gains and gains, 

Until there comes, you scarce know when, 

A tremble of fire o'er the parted lips 

Of cloud and mountain, which vanishes; 

then 
From the body of day the sun-soul slips 
And the face of earth darkens; but now the 

strips 
Of western vapor, straight and thin, 
From which the horizon's swervings win 
A grace of contrast, take fire and burn 
Like splinters of touchwood, whose edges a 

mould 
Of ashes o'erfeathers; northward turn 
For an instant, and let your eye grow cold 
On Agamenticus, and when once more 
You look, 't is as if the land-breeze, grow- 
ing, 
From the smouldering brands the film 

were blowing, 
And brightening them down to the very 

core; 
Yet they momently cool and dampen and 

deaden, 
The crimson turns golden, the gold turns 

leaden, 
Hardening into one black bar 
O'er which, from the hollow heaven afar, 
Shoots a splinter of light like diamond, 
Half seen, half fancied; by and by 
Beyond whatever is most beyond 
In the uttermost waste of desert sky, 
Grows a star; 

And over it, visible spirit of dew, — 
Ah, stir not, speak not, hold your breath, 
Or surely the miracle vanisheth, — 
The new moon, tranced in unspeakable 

blue! 
No frail illusion ; this were true, 
Rather, to call it the canoe 
Hollowed out of a single pearl, 
That floats us from the Present's whirl 
Back to those beings which were ours, 
When wishes were winged things like pow- 
ers ! 
Call it not light, that mystery tender, 
Which broods upon the brooding ocean 
That flush of ecstasied surrender 
To indefinable emotion, 
That glory, mellower than a mist 
Of pearl dissolved with amethyst, 
Which rims Square Rock, like what they 
paint 



THE WIND-HARP 



307 



Of mitigated heavenly splendor 
Round the stern forehead of a Saint ! 

No more a vision, reddened, largened, 
The moon dips toward her mountain nest, 
And, fringing it with palest argent, 
Slow sheathes herself behind the margent 
Of that long cloud-bar in the West, 
Whose nether edge, erelong, you see 
The silvery chrism in turn anoint, 
And then the tiniest rosy point 
Touched doubtfully and timidly 
Into the dark blue's chilly strip, 
As some mute, wondering thing below, 
Awakened by the thrilling glow, 
Might, looking up, see Dian dip 
One lucent foot's delaying tip 
In Latmian fountains long ago. 

Knew you what silence was before ? 
Here is no startle of dreaming bird 
That sings in his sleep, or strives to sing; 
Here is no sough of branches stirred, 
Nor noise of any living thing, 
Such as one hears by night on shore; 
Only, now and then, a sigh, 
With fickle intervals between, 
Sometimes far, and sometimes nigh, 
Such as Andromeda might have heard, 
And fancied the huge sea-beast unseen 
Turning in sleep ; it is the sea 
That welters and wavers uneasily 
Round the lonely reefs of Appledore. 

THE WIND-HARP 

"Your inspiration is still to you a living 
mistress — make her immortal in her prompt- 
ings and her consolations .by imaging her 
truly in art. Mine looks at me with eyes of 
paler flame and beckons across a gulf. You 
came into my loneliness like an incarnate as- 
piration. And it is dreary enough sometimes, 
for a mountain-peak on whose snow your foot 
makes the first mortal print is not so lonely as 
a room full of happy faces from which one is 
missing forever. This was originally the fifth 
stanza of The Windharp. 

tress ! that so oft in my heart hast lain, 
Rocked to rest within rest by its thankful beating, 

Say, which is harder — to bear the pain 

Of laughter and light, or to wait in vain 

'Neath the unleaved tree the impossible meeting ? 

If Death's lips be icy, Life gives, iwis, 

Some kisses more clay-cold and darkening than his ! 

Forgive me, but you spoke of it first." J. R. L. 
to W. J. Stillman, December 7, 1854. 



I treasure in secret some long, fine 

hair 
Of tenderest brown, but so inwardly 

golden 
I half used to fancy the sunshine there, 
So shy, so shifting, so waywardly rare, 
Was only caught for the moment and 

holden 
While I could say Dearest/ and kiss it, 

and then 
In pity let go to the summer again. 

I twisted this magic in gossamer strings 
Over a wind-harp's Delphian hollow; 
Then called to the idle breeze that swings 
All day in the pine-tops, and clings, and 

sings 
'Mid the musical leaves, and said, " Oh, 

follow 
The will of those tears that deepen my 

words, 
And fly to my window to waken these 

chords." 

So they trembled to life, and, doubtfully 
Feeling their way to my sense, sang, 
" Say whether 

They sit all day by the greenwood tree, 

The lover and loved, as it wont to be, 
When we — " But grief conquered, and 
all together 

They swelled such weird murmur as haunts 
a shore 

Of some planet dispeopled, — " Never- 
more ! " 

Then from deep in the past, as seemed to 
me, 
The strings gathered sorrow and sang 
forsaken, 

" One lover still waits 'neath the green- 
wood tree, 

But 't is dark," and they shuddered, 
" where lieth she 
Dark and cold ! Forever must one be 
taken ? " 

But I groaned, "O harp of all ruth be- 
reft, 

This Scripture is sadder, — * the other 
left'!" 

There murmured, as if one strove to speak, 
And tears came instead; then the sad 
tones wandered 
And faltered among the uncertain chords 



3 o8 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



In a troubled doubt between sorrow and 

words; 
At last with themselves they questioned 

and pondered, 
" Hereafter ? — who knoweth ? " and so 

they sighed 
Down the long steps that lead to silence 

and died. 



AUF WIEDERSEHEN 



The little gate was reached at last, 
Half hid in lilacs down the lane; 
She pushed it wide, and, as she past, 
A wistful look she backward cast, 
And said, — " Auf wiedersehen /" 

With hand on latch, a vision white 

Lingered reluctant, and again 
Half doubting if she did aright, 
Soft as the dews that fell that night, 

She said, — " Auf wiedersehen I " 

The lamp's clear gleam flits up the stair; 

I linger in delicious pain; 
Ah, in that chamber, whose rich air 
To breathe in thought I scarcely dare, 

Thinks she, — " Auf wiedersehen ? " . . . 

'T is thirteen years ; once more I press 
The turf that silences the lane ; 

I hear the rustle of her dress, 

I smell the lilacs, and — ah, yes, 
I hear " Auf wiedersehen I " 

Sweet piece of bashful maiden art ! 

The English words had seemed too 
fain, 
But these — they drew us heart to heart, 
Yet held us tenderly apart; 

She said, " Auf wiedersehen ! " 



PALINODE 

AUTUMN 

Still thirteen years: 't is autumn now 
On field and hill, in heart and brain; 

The naked trees at evening sough; 

The leaf to the forsaken bough 
Sighs not, — " Auf wiedersehen ! " 



Two watched yon oriole's pendent dome, 
That now is void, and dank with rain, 

And one, — oh, hope more frail than foam ! 

The bird to his deserted home 
Sings not, — " Auf wiedersehen ! " 

The loath gate swings with rusty creak; 

Once, parting there, we played at pain; 
There came a parting, when the weak 
And fading lips essayed to speak 

Vainly, — "Auf wiedersehen ! " 

Somewhere is comfort, somewhere faith, 

Though thou in outer dark remain; 
One sweet sad voice ennobles death, 
And still, for eighteen centuries saith 
Softly, — " Auf wiedersehen ! " 

If earth another grave must bear, 

Yet heaven hath won a sweeter strain, 
And something whispers my despair, 
That, from an orient chamber there, 
Floats down, "Auf wiedersehen I " 

AFTER THE BURIAL 

Lowell's second child, Rose, died after a 
week's illness in the spring of 1850. Her father 
wrote shortly after her death to Mr. Gay : 
"She was very beautiful — fair, with large 
dark-gray eyes and fine features. Her smile 
was especially charming, and she was full of 
smiles till her sickness began. Dear little 
child, she had never spoken, only smiled. To 
show you that I am not unable to go along 
with you in the feeling expressed in your let- 
ter, I will copy a few verses out of my com- 
mon-place book." The verses were the first 
form of the following poem, and will be found 
in the notes at the end of this volume. The 
poem, with its personal feeling over a universal 
human experience, found its way into many 
hearts. It " has roused," Lowell wrote in 1875, 
" strange echoes in men who assured me they 
were generally insensible to poetry. After all, 
the only stuff a solitary man has to spin is 
himself." 

Yes, faith is a goodly anchor; 

When skies are sweet as a psalm, 
At the bows it lolls so stalwart, 

In its bluff, broad-shouldered calm. 

And when over breakers to leeward 
The tattered surges are hurled, 

It may keep our head to the tempest, 
With its grip on the base of the world. 



THE DEAD HOUSE 



309 



But, after the shipwreck, tell me 

What help in its iron thews, 
Still true to the broken hawser, 

Deep down among sea-weed and ooze ? 

In the breaking gulfs of sorrow, 
When the helpless feet stretch out 

And find in the deeps of darkness 
No footing so solid as doubt, 

Then better one spar of Memory, 
One broken plank of the Past, 

That our human heart may cling to, 
Though hopeless of shore at last ! 

To the spirit its splendid conjectures, 

To the flesh its sweet despair, 
Its tears o'er the thin-worn locket 

With its anguish of deathless hair ! 

Immortal ? I feel it and know it, 
Who doubts it of such as she ? 

But that is the pang's very secret, — 
Immortal away from me. 

There 's a narrow ridge in the graveyard 
Would scarce stay a child in his race, 

But to me and my thought it is wider 
Than the star-sown vague of Space. 

Your logic, my friend, is perfect, 
Your moral most drearily true; 

But, since the earth clashed on her coffin, 
I keep hearing that, and not you. - 

Console if you will, I can bear it; 

'T is a well-meant alms of breath; 
But not all the preaching since Adam 

Has made Death other than Death. 

It is pagan ; but wait till you feel it, — 
That jar of our earth, that dull shock 

When the ploughshare of deeper passion 
Tears down to our primitive rock. 

Communion in spirit ! Forgive me, 
But I, who am earthly and weak, 

Would give all my incomes from dream- 
land 
For a touch of her hand on my cheek. 

That little shoe in the corner, 

So worn and wrinkled and brown, 

With its emptiness confutes you, 
And argues your wisdom down. 



THE DEAD HOUSE 

" I have a notion that the inmates of a house 
should never be changed. When the first oc- 
cupants go out it should be burned, and a stone 
set up with ' Sacred to the Memory of a Home ' 
on it. Suppose the body were eternal, and 
that when one spirit went out another took the 
lease. How frightful the strange expression 
of the eyes would be ! I fancy sometimes that 
the look in the eyes of a familiar house changes 
when aliens have come into it. For certainly 
a dwelling adapts itself to its occupants. The 
front door of a hospitable man opens easily 
and looks broad, and you can read Welcome ! 
on every step that leads to it. 

" I stopped there and tried to put that into 
verse. I have only half succeeded, and I 
shall not give it to you. I shall copy it and 
thrust it into Jane's letter." J. R. L. to C. E. 
Norton, August 31, 1858. 

A similar fancy appears in an earlier letter 
to Mrs. Francis G. Shaw, to whom Lowell 
wrote January 11, 1853 : " I spent Sunday 
with Edmund Quincy at Dedham, and, as I 
came back over the rail yesterday, I was 
roused from a reverie by seeing ' West Rox- 
bury Station ' written up over the door of a 
kind of Italian villa at which we stopped. I 
almost twisted my head off looking for the 
house on the hill. There it stood in mourning 
still, just as Frank painted it. The color suited 
my mood exactly. The eyes of the house 
were shut, the welcoming look it had was gone ; 
it was dead. I am a Platonist about houses. 
They get to my eye a shape from the souls 
that inhabit them. My friends' dwellings 
seem as peculiar to them as their bodies, looks, 
and motions. People have no right to sell 
their dead houses ; they should burn them as 
they used to burn corpses. ... I have buried 
that house now and flung my pious handful of 
earth over it and set up a headstone — and I 
shall never look up to the hill-top again, let 
me pass it never so often." 

Here once my step was quickened, 
Here beckoned the opening door, 

And welcome thrilled from the threshold 
To the foot it had known before. 

A glow came forth to meet me 

From the flame that laughed in the grate, 
And shadows adance on the ceiling, 

Danced blither with mine for a mate. 

" I claim you, old friend," yawned the arm- 
chair, 
" This corner, you know, is your seat;" 



3io 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



"Rest your slippers on me," beamed the 
fender, 
" I brighten at touch of your feet." 

" We know the practised finger," 

Said the books, " that seems like brain; " 

And the shy page rustled the secret 
It had kept till I came again. 

Sang the pillow, " My down once quivered 
On nightingales' throats that flew 

Through moonlit gardens of Hafiz 
To gather quaint dreams for you." 

Ah me, where the Past sowed heart's-ease, 
The Present plucks rue for us men ! 

I come back : that scar unhealing 
Was not in the churchyard then. 

But, I think, the house is unaltered, 

I will go and beg to look 
At the rooms that were once familiar 

To my life as its bed to a brook. 

Unaltered ! Alas for the sameness 
That makes the change but more ! 

'T is a dead man I see in the mirrors, 
'T is his tread that chills the floor ! 

To learn such a simple lesson, 
Need I go to Paris and Rome, 

That the many make the household, 
But only one the home ? 

'T was just a womanly presence, 

An influence unexprest, 
But a rose she had worn, on my grave- 
sod 

Were more than long life with the rest ! 

'T was a smile, 't was a garment's rustle, 
'T was nothing that I can phrase, 

But the whole dumb dwelling grew con- 
scious, 
And put on her looks and ways. 

Were it mine I would close the shutters, 

Like lids when the life is fled, 
And the funeral fire should wind it, 

This corpse of a home that is dead. 

For it died that autumn morning 

When she, its soul, was borne 
To lie all dark on the hillside 

That looks over woodland and corn. 



A MOOD 

I GO to the ridge in the forest 

I haunted in days gone by, 

But thou, O Memory, pourest 

No magical drop in mine eye, 

Nor the gleam of the secret restorest 

That hath faded from earth and sky : 

A Presence autumnal and sober 

Invests every rock and tree, 

And the aureole of October 

Lights the maples, but darkens me. 

Pine in the distance, 
Patient through sun or rain, 
Meeting with graceful persistence, 
With yielding but rooted resistance, 
The northwind's wrench and strain, 
No memory of past existence 
Brings thee pain; 
Right for the zenith heading, 
Friendly with heat or cold, 
Thine arms to the influence spreading 
Of the heavens, just from of old, 
Thou only aspirest the more, 
Unregretful the old leaves shedding 
That fringed thee with music before, 
And deeper thy roots embedding 
In the grace and the beauty of yore; 
Thou sigh'st not, " Alas, I am older, 
The green of last summer is sear ! " 
But loftier, hopefuller, bolder, 
Winnest broader horizons each year. 

To me 't is not cheer thou art singing: 

There 's a sound of the sea, 

O mournful tree, 

In thy boughs forever clinging, 

And the far-off roar 

Of waves on the shore 

A shattered vessel flinging. 

As thou musest still of the ocean 

On which thou must float at last, 

And seem'st to foreknow 

The shipwreck's woe 

And the sailor wrenched from the broken 

mast, 
Do I, in this vague emotion, 
This sadness that will not pass, 
Though the air throb with wings, 
And the field laughs and sings, 
Do I forebode, alas ! 
The ship-building longer and wearier, 



THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND 



3ii 



The voyage's struggle and strife, 
And then the darker and drearier 
Wreck of a broken life ? 



THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND 

In the letter to Mr. Norton, quoted at the 
beginning of this section, reference is made to 
The Voyage to Vinland, which Lowell had some 
thought of making the title-poem of the vol- 
ume. In the same letter ha says f urther re- 
garding it : " Part of [this poem], you remem- 
ber, was written eighteen years ago. I meant 
to have made it much longer, but maybe it 
is better as it is. I clapt a beginning upon 
it, patched it in the middle, and then got to 
what has always been my favorite part of the 
plan. This was to be a prophecy by Gudrida, 
a woman who went with them, of the future 
America. I have written in an unrhymed 
alliterated measure, in very short verse and 
stanzas of five lines each. It does not aim at 
following the law of the Icelandic alliterated 
stave, but hints at it and also at the asonante, 
without being properly either. But it runs 
well and is melodious, and we think it pretty 
good here, as does also Howells. Well, after 
that, of course, I was all for alliteration." The 
poem had apparently first borne the title of 
Leifs Voyage, as he writes of that poem to Mr. 
Briggs in 1850. 

I 

biorn's BECKONERS 

Now Biorn, the son of Heriulf , had ill days 
Because the heart within him seethed with 

blood 
That would not be allayed with any toil, 
Whether of war or hunting or the oar, 
But was anhungered for some joy untried: 
For the brain grew not weary with the 

limbs, 
But, while they slept, still hammered like a 

Troll, 
Building all night a bridge of solid dream 
Between him and some purpose of his soul, 
Or will to find a purpose. With the dawn 
The sleep-laid timbers, crumbled to soft 

mist, 
Denied all foothold. But the dream re- 
mained, 
And every night with yellow-bearded kings 
His sleep was haunted, — mighty men of 

old, 
Once young as he, now ancient like the 

gods, 



And safe as stars in all men's memories. 
Strange sagas read he in their sea-blue eyes 
Cold as the sea, grandly compassionless ; 
Like life, they made him eager and then 

mocked. 
Nay, broad awake, they would not let him 

be; 
They shaped themselves gigantic in the 

mist, 
They rose far-beckoning in the lamps of 

heaven, 
They whispered invitation in the winds, 
And breath came from them, mightier than 

the wind, 
To strain the lagging sails of his resolve, 
Till that grew passion which before was 

wish, 
And youth seemed all too costly to be 

staked 
On the soiled cards wherewith men played 

their game, 
Letting Time pocket up the larger life, 
Lost with base gain of raiment, food, and 

roof. 
"What helpeth lightness of the feet?" 

they said, 
" Oblivion runs with swifter foot than 

they; 
Or strength of sinew ? New men come as 

strong, 
And those sleep nameless; or renown in 

war ? 
Swords grave no name on the long-mem- 

oried rock 
But moss shall hide it; they alone who 

wring 
Some secret purpose from the unwilling 

gods 
Survive in song for yet a little while 
To vex, like us, the dreams of later men, 
Ourselves a dream, and dreamlike all we 

did." 

11 

thorwald's lay 

So Biorn went comfortless but for his 

thought, 
And by his thought the more discomforted, 
Till Eric Thurlsonkept his Yule-tide feast: 
And thither came he, called among the rest, 
Silent, lone-minded, a church-door to mirth : 
But, ere deep draughts forbade such seri- 
ous song 
As the grave Skald might chant nor after 
blush, 



312 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



Then Eric looked at Thorwald where he sat 
Mute as a cloud amid the stormy hall, 
And said: " O Skald, sing now an olden 

song, 
Such as our fathers heard who led great 

lives; 
And, as the bravest on a shield is' borne 
Along the waving host that shouts him king, 
So rode their thrones upon the thronging 

seas ! " 
Then the old man arose; white-haired he 

stood, 
White-bearded, and with eyes that looked 

afar 
From their still region of perpetual snow, 
Beyond the little smokes and stirs of men: 
His head was bowed with gathered flakes 

of years, 
As winter bends the sea-foreboding pine, 
But something triumphed in his brow and 

eye, 
Which whoso saw it could not see and 

crouch: 
Loud rang the emptied beakers as he mused, 
Brooding his eyried thoughts; then, as an 

eagle 
Circles smooth -winged above the wind- 
vexed woods, 
So wheeled his soul into the air of song 
High o'er the stormy hall; and thus he 

sang: 
" The fletcher for his arrow-shaft picks out 
Wood closest - grained, long - seasoned, 

straight as light; 
And from a quiver full of such as these 
The wary bowman, matched against his 

peers, 
Long doubting, singles yet once more the 

best. 
Who is it needs such flawless shafts as 

Fate? 
What archer of his arrows is so choice, 
Or hits the white so surely ? They are men, 
The chosen of her quiver; nor for her 
Will every reed suffice, or cross-grained 

stick 
At random from life's vulgar fagot plucked : 
Such answer household ends; but she will 

have 
Souls straight and clear, of toughest fibre, 

sound 
Down to the heart of heart; from these she 

strips 
All needless stuff, all sapwood; seasons 

them; 



From circumstance untoward feathers 
plucks 

Crumpled and cheap; and barbs with iron 
will: 

The hour that passes is her quiver-boy: 

When she draws bow, 't is not across the 
wind, 

Nor 'gainst the sun her haste - snatched 
arrow sings, 

For sun and wind have plighted faith to 
her: 

Ere men have heard the sinew twang, be- 
hold 

In the butt's heart her trembling messen- 
ger ! 

" The song is old and simple that I sing; 
But old and simple are despised as cheap, 
Though hardest to achieve of human things: 
Good were the days of yore, when men 

were tried 
By ring of shields, as now by ring of words; 
But while the gods are left, and hearts of 

men, 
And wide-doored ocean, still the days are 

good. 
Still o'er the earth hastes Opportunity, 
Seeking the hardy soul that seeks for her. 
Be not abroad, nor deaf with household 

cares 
That chatter loudest as they mean the 

least; 
Swift- willed is thrice -willed; late means 

nevermore ; 
Impatient is her foot, nor turns again." 
He ceased; upon his bosom sank his beard 
Sadly, as one who oft had seen her pass 
Nor stayed her: and forthwith the frothy 

tide 
Of interrupted wassail roared along. 
But Biorn, the son of Heriulf, sat apart 
Musing, and, with his eyes upon the fire, 
Saw shapes of arrows, lost as soon as seen. 
" A ship," he muttered, "is a winged bridge 
That leadeth every way to man's desire, 
And ocean the wide gate to manful luck." 
And then with that resolve his heart was 

bent, 
Which, like a humming shaft, through 

many a stripe 
Of day and night, across the unpathwayed 

seas 
Shot the brave prow that cut on Vinland 



The first rune in the Saga of the West. 



THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND 



3*3 



gudrida's prophecy 

Four weeks they sailed, a speck in sky-shut 

seas, 
Life, where was never life that knew itself, 
But tumbled lubber-like in blowing whales ; 
Thought, where the like had never been 

before 
Since Thought primeval brooded the abyss; 
Alone as men were never in the world. 
They saw the icy foundlings of the sea, 
White cliffs of silence, beautiful by day, 
Or looming, sudden-perilous, at night 
In monstrous hush ; or sometimes in the dark 
The waves broke ominous with paly gleams 
Crushed by the prow in sparkles of cold fire. 
Then came green stripes of sea that prom- 
ised land 
But brought it not, and on the thirtieth day 
Low in the west were wooded shores like 

cloud. 
They shouted as men shout with sudden 

hope; 
But Bibrn was silent, such strange loss 

there is 
Between the dream's fulfilment and the 

dream, 
Such sad abatement in the goal attained. 
Then Gudrida, that was a prophetess, 
Rapt with strange influence' from Atlantis, 

sang: 
Her words: the vision was the dreaming 

shore's. 

Looms there the New Land: 
Locked in the shadow 
Long the gods shut it, 
Niggards of newness 
They, the o'er-old. 

Little it looks there, 
Slim as a cloud-streak; 
It shall fold peoples 
Even as a shepherd 
Foldeth his flock. 

Silent it sleeps now; 
Great ships shall seek it, 
Swarming as salmon; 
Noise of its numbers 
Two seas shall hear. 



Men from the Northland, 
Men from the Southland, 
Haste empty-handed; 
No more than manhood 
Bring they, and hands. 

Dark hair and fair hair, 
Red blood and blue blood, 
There shall be mingled; 
Force of the ferment 
Makes the New Man. 

Pick of all kindreds, 
Kings' blood shall theirs be, 
Shoots of the eldest 
Stock upon Midgard, 
Sons of the poor. 

Them waits the New Land; 
They shall subdue it, 
Leaving their sons' sons 
Space for the body, 
Space for the soul. 

Leaving their sons' sons 
All things save song-craft, 
Plant long in growing, 
Thrusting its tap-root 
Deep in the Gone. 

Here men shall grow up 
Strong from self -helping; 
Eyes for the present 
Bring they as eagles', 
Blind to the Past. 

They shall make over 
Creed, law, and custom; 
Driving-men, doughty 
Builders of empire, 
Builders of men. 

Here is no singer; 
What should they sing of ? 
They, the unresting ? 
Labor is ugly, 
Loathsome is change. 

These the old gods hate, 
Dwellers in dream-land, 
Drinking delusion 
Out of the empty 
Skull of the Past. 



314 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



These hate the old gods, 
Warring against them; 
Fatal to Odin, 
Here the wolf Fenrir 
Lieth in wait. 

Here the gods' Twilight 
Gathers, earth-gulfing; 
Blackness of battle, 
Fierce till the Old World 
Flare up in fire. 

Doubt not, my Northmen; 
Fate loves the fearless; 
Fools, when their roof-tree 
Falls, think it doomsday; 
Firm stands the sky. 

Over the ruin 
See I the promise; 
Crisp waves the cornfield, 
Peace-walled, the homestead 
Waits open-doored. 

There lies the New Land; 
Yours to behold it, 
Not to possess it; 
Slowly Fate's perfect 
Fulness shall come. 

Then from your strong loins 
Seed shall be scattered, 
Men to the marrow, 
Wilderness tamers, 
Walkers of waves. 

Jealous, the old gods 
Shut it in shadow, 
Wisely they ward it, 
Egg of the serpent, 
Bane to them all. 

Stronger and sweeter 
New gods shall seek it, 
Fill it with man-folk 
Wise for the future, 
Wise from the past. 

Here all is all men's, 
Save only Wisdom; 
King he that wins her; 
Him hail they helmsman, 
Highest of heart. 



Might makes no master 
Here any longer; 
Sword is not swayer; 
Here e'en the gods are 
Selfish no more. 

Walking the New Earth, 
Lo, a divine One 
Greets all men godlike, 
Calls them his kindred, 
He, the Divine. 

Is it Thor's hammer 
Rays in his right hand ? 
Weaponless walks he ; 
It is the White Christ, 
Stronger than Thor. 

Here shall a realm rise 
Mighty in manhood; 
Justice and Mercy 
Here set a stronghold 
Safe without spear. 

Weak was the Old World, 
Wearily war-fenced; 
Out of its ashes, 
Strong as the morning, 
Springeth the New. 

Beauty of promise, 
Promise of beauty, 
Safe in the silence 
Sleep thou, till cometh 
Light to thy lids ! 

Thee shall awaken 
Flame from the furnace, 
Bath of all brave ones, 
Cleanser of conscience, 
Welder of will. 

Lowly shall love thee, 
Thee, open-handed ! 
Stalwart shall shield thee, 
Thee, worth their best blood, 
Waif of the West ! 

Then shall come singers, 
Singing no swan-song, 
Birth-carols, rather, 
Meet for the man child 
Mighty of bone. 



INVITA MINERVA 



3i5 



MAHMOOD THE IMAGE- 
BREAKER 

Old events have modern meanings; only 

that survives 
Of past history which finds kindred in all 

hearts and lives. 

Mahmood once, the idol-breaker, spreader 

of the Faith, 
Was at Sumnat tempted sorely, as the 

legend saith. 

In the great pagoda's centre, monstrous 

and abhorred, 
Granite on a throne of granite, sat the 

temple's lord. 

Mahmood paused a moment, silenced by 

the silent face 
That, with eyes of stone unwavering, awed 

the ancient place. 

Then the Brahmins knelt before him, by 

his doubt made bold, 
Pledging for their idol's ransom countless 

gems and gold. 

Gold was yellow dirt to Mahmood, but of 

precious use, 
Since from it the roots of power suck a 

potent juice. 

" Were yon stone alone in question, this 

would please me well," 
Mahmood said; " but, with the block there, 

I my truth must sell. 

"Wealth and rule slip .down with Fortune, 
as her wheel turns round; 

He who keeps his faith, he only cannot -be 
discrowned. 

"Little were a change of station, loss of 

life or crown, 
But the wreck were past retrieving if the 

Man fell down." 

So his iron mace he lifted, smote with 

might and main, 
And the idol, on the pavement tumbling, 

burst in twain,, 



Luck obeys the downright striker ; from 

the hollow core, 
Fifty times the Brahmins' offer deluged 

all the floor. 

INVITA MINERVA 

The Bardling came where by a river grew 
The pennoned reeds, that, as the west- 
wind blew, 
Gleamed and sighed plaintively, as if they 

knew 
What music slept enchanted in each stem, 
Till Pan should choose some happy one of 

them, 
And with wise lips enlife it through and 
through. 

The Bardling thought, "A pipe is all I 

need; 
Once I have sought me out a clear, smooth 

reed, 
And shaped it to my fancy, I proceed 
To breathe such strains as, yonder mid the 

rocks, 
The strange youth blows, that tends Ad- 

metus' flocks, 
And all the maidens shall to me pay heed." 

The summer day he spent in questful 

round, 
And many a reed he marred, but never 

found 
A conjuring-spell to free the imprisoned 

sound; 
At last his vainly wearied limbs he laid 
Beneath a sacred laurel's flickering shade, 
And sleep about his brain her cobweb 

wound. 

Then strode the mighty Mother through 

his dreams, 
Saying: " The reeds along a thousand 

streams 
Are mine, and who is he that plots and 

schemes 
To snare the melodies wherewith my breath 
Sounds through the double pipes of Life 

and Death, 
Atoning what to men mad discord seems ? 

" He seeks not me, but I seek oft in vain 
For him who shall my voiceful reeds con- 
strain, 



316 UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 


And make them utter their melodious pain; 


And this fount, its sole daughter, 


He flies the immortal gift, for well he 


To the woodland was granted 


knows 


To pour holy water 


His life of life must with its overflows 


And win benediction; 


Flood the unthankful pipe, nor come again. 


In summer-noon flushes, 




When all the wood hushes, 


" Thou fool, who dost my harmless subjects 


Blue dragon-flies knitting 


wrong, 


To and fro in the sun, 


'T is not the singer's wish that makes the 


With sidelong jerk flitting 


song: 


Sink down on the rushes, 


The rhythmic beauty wanders dumb, how 


And, motionless sitting, 


long, 


Hear it bubble and run, 


Nor stoops to any daintiest instrument, 


Hear its low inward singing, 


Till, found its mated lips, their sweet con- 


With level wings swinging 


sent 


On green tasselled rushes, 


Makes mortal breath than Time and Fate 


To dream in the sun. 


more strong." 


ill 


THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 


'T is a woodland enchanted ! 
The great August noonlight ! 


This poem, written apparently in the win- 


Through myriad rifts slanted, 


ter of 1849-50, was to have been included in 


Leaf and bole thickly sprinkles 


the projected work, The Nooning. 


With flickering gold; 




There, in warm August gloaming, 




With quick, silent brightenings, 


'T is a woodland enchanted ! 


From meadow-lands roaming, 


By no sadder spirit 


The firefly twinkles 


Than blackbirds and thrushes, 


His fitful heat-lightnings; 


That whistle to cheer it 


There the magical moonlight 


All day in the bushes, 


With meek, saintly glory 


This woodland is haunted: 


Steeps summit and wold; 


And in a small clearing, 


There whippoorwills plain in the soli« 


Beyond sight or hearing 


tudes hoary 


Of human annoyance, 


With lone cries that wander 


The little fouut gushes, 


Now hither, now yonder, 


First smoothly, then dashes 


Like souls doomed of old 


And gurgles and flashes, 


To a mild purgatory; 


To the maples and ashes 


But through noonlight and moonlight 


Confiding its joyance; 


The little fount tinkles 


Unconscious confiding, 


Its silver saints'-bells, 


Then, silent and glossy, 


That no sprite ill-boding 


Slips winding and hiding 


• May make his abode in 


Through alder-stems mossy, 


Those innocent dells. 


Through gossamer roots 


IV 


Fine as nerves, 


That tremble, as shoots 


'T is a woodland enchanted ! 


Through their magnetized curves 


When the phebe scarce whistles 


The allurement delicious 


Once an hour to his fellow, 


Of the water's capricious 


And, where red lilies flaunted, 


Thrills, gushes, and swerves. 


Balloons from the thistles 




Tell summer's disasters, 


II 


The butterflies yellow, 


'T is a woodland enchanted ! 


As caught in an eddy 


I am writing no fiction; 


Of air's silent ocean, 



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 


317 


Sink, waver, and steady 


And o'er it 




O'er goats'-beard and asters, 


A birch hangs delighted, 




Like souls of dead flowers, 


Dipping, dipping, dipping its tremulous 


With aimless emotion 


hair; 




Still lingering unready 


Pure as the fountain, once 




To leave their old bowers; 


I came to the place, 




And the fount is no dumber, 


(How dare I draw nearer ?) 




But still gleams and flashes, 


I bent o'er its mirror, 




And gurgles and plashes, 


And saw a child's face 




To the measure of summer; 


Mid locks of bright gold in it; 




The butterflies hear it, 


Yes, pure as this fountain once, - 




And spell-bound are holden, 


Since, how much error! 




Still balancing near it 


Too holy a mirror 




O'er the goats'-beard so golden. 


For the man to behold in it 




V 


His harsh, bearded countenance! 




'T is a woodland enchanted! 


VI 




A vast silver willow, 


'T is a woodland enchanted! 




I know not how planted, 


Ah, fly unreturning! 




(This wood is enchanted, 
And full of surprises,) 


Yet stay; — 




'T is a woodland enchanted, 




Stands stemming a billow, 


Where wonderful chances 




A motionless billow 


Have sway; 




Of ankle-deep mosses; 


Luck flees from the cold one, 




Two great roots it crosses 


But leaps to the bold one 




To make a round basin, 


Half-way ; 




And there the Fount rises; 


Why should I be daunted ? 




Ah, too pure a mirror 


Still the smooth mirror glances, 




For one sick of error 


Still the amber sand dances, 




To see his sad face in! 


One look, — then away! 




No dew-drop is stiller 


magical glass! 




In its lupin-leaf setting 


Canst keep in thy bosom 




Than this water moss-bounded ; 


Shades of leaf and of blossom 




But a tiny sand-pillar 


When summer days pass, 




From the bottom keeps jetting, 


So that when thy wave hardens 




And mermaid ne'er sounded 


It shapes as it pleases, 




Through the wreaths of a shell, 


Unharmed by the breezes, 




Down amid crimson dulses 


Its fine hanging gardens ? 




In some cavern of ocean, 


Hast those in thy keeping, 




A melody sweeter 


And canst not uncover, 




Than the delicate pulses, 


Enchantedly sleeping, 




The soft, noiseless metre, 


The old shade of thy lover ? 




The pause and the swell 


It is there! I have found it! 




Of that musical motion: 


He wakes, the long sleeper! 




I recall it, not see it; 


The pool is grown deeper, 




Could vision be clearer ? 


The sand dance is ending, 




Half I 'm fain to draw nearer 


The white floor sinks, blending 




Half tempted to flee it; 


With skies that below me 




The sleeping Past wake not, 


Are deepening and bending, 




Beware! 


And a child's face alone 




One forward step take not, 


That seems not to know me, 




Ah! break not 


With hair that fades golden 




That quietude rare! 


In the heaven-glow round it, 




By my step unaffrighted 


Looks up at my own; 




A thrush hops before it, 


Ah, glimpse through the portal 





3i» 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



That leads to the throne, 


In the fountain of youth 


That opes the child's olden 


The fleeting reflection 


Regions Elysian! 


Of some bygone perfection 


Ah, too holy vision 


That still lingers in me ? 


For thy skirts to be holden 




By soiled hand of mortal! 




It wavers, it scatters, 


YUSSOUF 


'T is gone past recalling! 




A tear's sudden falling 


A stranger came one night to Yussouf's 


The magic cup shatters, 


tent, 


Breaks the spell of the waters, 


Saying, " Behold, one outcast and in dread, 


And the sand cone once more, 


Against whose life the bow of power is 


With a ceaseless renewing, 


bent, 


Its dance is pursuing 


Who flies, and hath not where to lay his 


On the silvery floor, 


head; 


O'er and o'er, 


I come to thee for shelter and for food, 


With a noiseless and ceaseless renew- 


To Yussouf, called through all our tribes 


ing. 


'The Good.'" 


VII 


" This tent is mine," said Yussouf, " but no 


'T is a woodland enchanted ! 


more 


If you ask me, Where is it f 


Than it is God's; come in and be at peace j 


I can but make answer, 


Freely shalt thou partake of all my store 


" 'T is past my disclosing; " 


As I of His who buildeth over these 


Not to choice is it granted 


Our tents his glorious roof of night and 


By sure paths to visit 


day, 


The still pool enclosing 


And at whose door none ever yet heard 


Its blithe little dancer; 


Nay." 


But in some day, the rarest 




Of many Septembers, 


So Yussouf entertained his guest that night, 


When the pulses of air rest, 


And, waking him ere day, said : " Here is 


And all things lie dreaming 


; gold; 


In drowsy haze steaming 


My swiftest horse is saddled for thy flight; 


From the wood's glowing embers, 


Depart before the prying day grow bold." 


Then, sometimes, unheeding, 


As one lamp lights another, nor grows 


And asking not whither, 


less, 


By a sweet inward leading 


So nobleness enkindleth nobleness. 


My feet are drawn thither, 




And, looking with awe in the magical 


That inward light the stranger's face made 


mirror, 


grand, 


I see through my tears, 


Which shines from all self -conquest; kneel- 


Half doubtful of seeing, 


ing low, 


The face unperverted, 


He bowed his forehead upon Yussouf's 


The warm golden being 


hand, 


Of a child of five years; 


Sobbing: " Sheik, I cannot leave thee 


And spite of the mists and the error, 


so; 


And the days overcast, 


I will repay thee ; all this thou hast done 


Can feel that I walk undeserted, 


Unto that Ibrahim who slew thy son ! " 


But forever attended 




By the glad heavens that bended 


" Take thrice the gold," said Yussouf, " for 


O'er the innocent past; 


with thee 


Toward fancy or truth 


Into the desert, never to return, 


Doth the sweet vision win me ? 


My one black thought shall ride away from 


Dare I think that I cast 


me ; 



ALL-SAINTS 



3i9 



First-born, for whom by day and night I 
yearn, 

Balanced and just are all of God's de- 
crees; 

Thou art avenged, my first-born, sleep in 
peace ! " 



THE DARKENED MIND 

The fire is burning clear and blithely, 
Pleasantly whistles the winter wind; 
We are about thee, thy friends and kin- 
dred, 
On us all flickers the firelight kind; 
There thou sittest in thy wonted corner 
Lone and awful in thy darkened mind. 

There thou sittest; now and then thou 

moanest; 
Thou dost talk with what we cannot see, 
Lookest at us with an eye so doubtful, 
It doth put us very far from thee; 
There thou sittest; we would fain be nigh 

thee, 
But we know that it can never be. 

We can touch thee, still we are no nearer; 
Gather round thee, still thou art alone; 
The wide chasm of reason is between us; 
Thou conf utest kindness with a moan ; 
We can speak to thee, and thou canst an- 
swer, 
Like two prisoners through a wall of stone. 

Hardest heart would call it very awful 
When thou look'st at us and seest — oh, 

what? 
If we move away, thou sittest gazing 
With those vague eyes at the selfsame 

spot, 
And thou mutterest, thy hands thou wring- 

est, 
Seeing something, — us thou seest not. 

Strange it is that, in this open bright- 
ness, 

Thou shouldst sit in such a narrow cell; 

Strange it is that thou shouldst be so lone- 
some 

Where those are who love thee all so 
well; 

Not so much of thee is left among us 

As the hum outliving the hushed bell. 



WHAT RABBI JEHOSHA SAID 
Originally written for a Fair in St. Louis. 

Rabbi Jehosha used to say 
That God made angels every day, 
Perfect as Michael and the rest 
First brooded in creation's nest, 
Whose" only office was to cry 
Hosanna I once, and then to die; 
Or rather, with Life's essence blent, 
To be led home from banishment. 

Rabbi Jehosha had the skill 
To know that Heaven is in God's will ; 
And doing that, though for a space 
One heart-beat long, may win a grace 
As full of grandeur and of glow 
As Princes of the Chariot know. 

'T were glorious, no doubt, to be 

One of the strong-winged Hierarchy, 

To burn with Seraphs, or to shine 

With Cherubs, deathlessly divine; 

Yet I, perhaps, poor earthly clod, 

Could I forget myself in God, 

Could I but find my nature's clue 

Simply as birds and blossoms do, 

And but for one rapt moment know 

'T is Heaven must come, not we must 

go. 
Should win my place as near the throne 
As the pearl-angel of its zone, 
And God would listen mid the throng 
For my one breath of perfect song, 
That, in its simple human way, 
Said all the Host of Heaven could say. 



ALL-SAINTS 

One feast, of holy days the crest, 

I, though no Churchman, love to keep, 
All-Saints, — the unknown good that rest 

In God's still memory folded deep ; 
The bravely dumb that did their deed, 

And scorned to blot it with a name, 
Men of the plain heroic breed, 

That loved Heaven's silence more than 
fame. 

Such lived not in the past alone, 

But thread to-day the unheeding street, 



320 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



And stairs to Sin and Famine known 
Sing with the welcome of their feet; 

The den they enter grows a shrine, 
The grimy sash an oriel burns, 

Their cup of water warms like wine, 

Their speech is filled from heavenly urns. 

About their brows to me appears 

An aureole traced in tenderest light, 
The rainbow-gleam of smiles through tears 

In dying eyes, by them made bright, 
Of souls that shivered on the edge 

Of that chill ford repassed no more, 
And in their mercy felt the pledge 

And sweetness of the farther shore. 



A WINTER-EVENING HYMN TO 
MY FIRE 



Beauty on my hearth-stone blazing ! 
To-night the triple Zoroaster 
Shall my prophet be and master: 
To-night will I pure Magian be, 
Hymns to thy sole honor raising, 
While thou leapest fast and faster, 
Wild with self-delighted glee, 
Or sink'st low and glowest faintly 
As an aureole still and saintly, 
Keeping cadence to my praising 
Thee ! still thee ! and only thee ! 



Elfish daughter of Apollo ! 

Thee, from thy father stolen and bound 

To serve in Vulcan's clangorous smithy, 

Prometheus (primal Yankee) found, 

And, when he had tampered with thee, 

(Too confiding little maid !) 

In a reed's precarious hollow 

To our frozen earth conveyed: 

For he swore I know not what; 

Endless ease should be thy lot, 

Pleasure that should never falter, 

Lifelong play, and not a duty 

Save to hover o'er the altar, 

Vision of celestial beauty, 

Fed with precious woods and spices ; 

Then, perfidious ! having got 

Thee in the net of his devices, 

Sold thee into endless slavery, 

Made thee a drudge to boil the pot, 

Thee, Helios' daughter, who dost bear 

His likeness in thy golden hair; 



Thee, by nature wild and wavery, 
Palpitating, evanescent 
As the shade of Dian's crescent, 
Life, motion, gladness, everywhere ! 



Fathom deep men bury thee 
In the furnace dark and still, 
There, with dreariest mockery, 
Making thee eat, against thy will, 
Blackest Pennsylvanian stone; 
But thou dost avenge thy doom, 
For, from out thy catacomb, 
Day and night thy wrath is blown 
In a withering simoom, 
And, adown that cavern drear, 
Thy black pitfall in the floor, 
Staggers the lusty antique cheer, 
Despairing, and is seen no more ! 



Elfish I may rightly name thee ; 
We enslave, but cannot tame thee; 
With fierce snatches, now and then, 
Thou pluckest at thy right again, 
And thy down-trod instincts savage 
To stealthy insurrection creep 
While thy wittol masters sleep, 
And burst in undiscerning ravage: 
Then how thou shak'st thy bacchant locks ! 
While brazen pulses, far and near, 
Throb thick and thicker, wild with fear 
And dread conjecture, till the drear 
Disordered clangor every steeple rocks ! 



But when we make a friend of thee, 
And admit thee to the hall 
On our nights of festival, 
Then, Cinderella, who could see 
In thee the kitchen's stunted thrall ? 
Once more a Princess lithe and tall, 
Thou dancest with a whispering tread, 
While the bright marvel of thy head 
In crinkling gold floats all abroad, 
And gloriously dost vindicate 
The legend of thy lineage great, 
Earth-exiled daughter of the Pythian god ! 
Now in the ample chimney-place, 
To honor thy acknowledged race, 
We crown thee high with laurel good, 
Thy shining father's sacred wood, 
Which, guessing thy ancestral right, 
Sparkles and snaps its dumb delight, 
And, at thy touch, poor outcast one, 



A WINTER-EVENING HYMN TO MY FIRE 



321 



Feels through its gladdened fibres go 
The tingle and thrill and vassal glow 
Of instincts loyal to the sun. 



O thou of home the guardian Lar, 

And, when our earth hath wandered far 

Into the cold, and deep snow covers 

The walks of our New England lovers, 

Their sweet secluded evening-star ! 

'T was with thy rays the English Muse 

Ripened her mild domestic hues ; 

'T was by thy flicker that she conned 

The fireside wisdom that enrings 

With light from heaven familiar things; 

By thee she found the homely faith 

In whose mild eyes thy comfort stay'th, 

When Death, extinguishing his torch, 

Gropes for the latch-string in the porch ; 

The love that wanders not beyond 

His earliest nest, but sits and sings 

While children smooth his patient wings; 

Therefore with thee I love to read 

Our brave old poets: at thy touch how 

stirs 
Life in the withered words ! how swift 

recede 
Time's shadows ! and how glows again 
Through its dead mass the incandescent 

verse, 
As when upon the anvils of the brain 
It glittering lay, cyclopically wrought 
By the fast - throbbing hammers of the 

poet's thought ! 
Thou murmurest, too, divinely stirred, 
The aspirations unattained, 
The rhythms so rathe and delicate, 
They bent and strained 
And broke, beneath the sombre weight 
Of any airiest mortal word. 



What warm protection dost thou bend 
Round curtained talk of friend with friend, 
While the gray snow-storm, held aloof, 
To softest outline rounds the roof, 
Or the rude North with baffled strain 
Shoulders the frost-starred window-pane ! 
Now the kind nymph to Bacchus born 
By Morpheus' daughter, she that seems 
Gifted upon her natal morn 
By him with fire, by her with dreams, 
Nicotia, dearer to the Muse 
Than all the grape's bewildering juice, 
We worship, unf orbid of thee ; 



And, as her incense floats and curls 

In airy spires and wayward whirls, 

Or poises on its tremulous stalk 

A flower of frailest revery, 

So winds and loiters, idly free, 

The current of unguided talk, 

Now laughter-rippled, and now caught 

In smooth, dark pools of deeper thought. 

Meanwhile thou mellowest every word, 

A sweetly unobtrusive third; 

For thou hast magic beyond wine, 

To unlock natures each to each; 

The unspoken thought thou canst divine; 

Thou fill'st the pauses of the speech 

With whispers that to dream-land reach 

And frozen fancy-springs unchain 

In Arctic outskirts of the brain : 

Sun of all inmost confidences, 

To thy rays doth the heart unclose 

Its formal calyx of pretences, 

That close against rude day's offences, 

And open its shy midnight rose ! 



Thou holdest not the master key 

With which thy Sire sets free the mystic 



Of Past and Future: not for common fates 

Do they wide open fling, 

And, with a far-heard ring, 

Swing back their willing valves melodi- 
ously; 

Only to ceremonial days, 

And great processions of imperial song 

That set the world at gaze, 

Doth such high privilege belong: 

But thou a postern-door canst ope 

To humbler chambers of the selfsame 
palace 

Where Memory lodges, and her sister 
Hope, 

Whose being is but as a crystal chalice 

Which, with her various mood, the elder 
fills 

Of joy or sorrow, 

So coloring as she wills 

With hues of yesterday the unconscious 
morrow. 



Thou sinkest, and my fancy sinks with 

thee: 
For thee I took the idle shell, 
And struck the unused chords again, 
But they are gone who listened well; 



322 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



Some are in heaven, and all are far from 

me: 
Even as I sing, it turns to pain, 
And with vain tears my eyelids throb and 

swell : 
Enough; I come not of the race 
That hawk their sorrows in the market- 
place. 
Earth stops the ears I best had loved to 

please; 
Then break, ye untuned chords, or rust in 

peace ! 
As if a white-haired actor should come 

back 
Some midnight to the theatre void and 

black, 
And there rehearse his youth's great part 
Mid thin applauses of the ghosts, 
So seems it now : ye crowd upon my 

heart, 
And I bow down in silence, shadowy hosts ! 



FANCY'S CASUISTRY 

How struggles with the tempest's swells 
That warning of tumultuous bells ! 
The fire is loose ! and frantic knells 

Throb fast and faster, 
As tower to tower confusedly tells 

News of disaster. 

But on my far-off solitude 
No harsh alarums can intrude ; 
The terror comes to me subdued 

And charmed by distance, 
To deepen the habitual mood 

Of my existence. 

Are those, I muse, the Easter chimes ? 
And listen, weaving careless rhymes 
While the loud city's griefs and crimes 

Pay gentle allegiance 
To the fine quiet that sublimes 

These dreamy regions. 

And when the storm o'er whelms the shore, 
I watch entranced as, o'er and o'er, 
The light revolves amid the roar 

So still and saintly, 
Now large and near, now more and more 

Withdrawing faintly. 

This, too, despairing sailors see 
Flash out the breakers 'neath their lee 



In sudden snow, then lingeringly 

Wane tow'rd eclipse, 
While through the dark the shuddering 
sea 

Gropes for the ships. 

And is it right, this mood of mind 
That thus, in revery enshrined, 
Can in the world mere topics find 

For musing stricture, 
Seeing the life of humankind 

Only as picture ? 

The events in line of battle go ; 
In vain for me their trumpets blow 
As unto him that lieth low 

In death's dark arches, 
And through the sod hears throbbing slow 

The muffled marches. 

O Duty, am I dead to thee 
In this my cloistered ecstasy, 
In this lone shallop on the sea 

That drifts tow'rd Silence ? 
And are those visioned shores I see 

But sirens' islands ? 

My Dante frowns with lip-locked mien, 
As who would say, " 'T is those, I ween, 
Whom lifelong armor-chafe makes lean 

That win the laurel ; " 
But where is Truth ? What does it mean, 

The world-old quarrel ? 

Such questionings are idle air : 
Leave what to do and what to spare 
To the inspiring moment's care, 

Nor ask for payment 
Of fame or gold, but just to wear 

Unspotted raiment. 



TO MR. JOHN BARTLETT 

WHO HAD SENT ME A SEVEN-POUND 
TROUT 

Mr. Bartlett, the editor of Familiar Quota- 
tions, was a near neighbor of Lowell, and with 
him was long a member of a whist-party. 

Fit for an Abbot of Theleme, 

For the whole Cardinals' College, or 
The Pope himself to see in dream 
Before his lenten vision gleam, 

He lies there, the sogdologer ! 



ODE TO HAPPINESS 



3 2 3 



His precious flanks with stars besprent, 

Worthy to swim in Castaly ! 
The friend by whom such gifts are sent, 
For him shall bumpers full be spent, 
His health ! be Luck his fast ally ! 

I see him trace the wayward brook 

Amid the forest mysteries, 
Where at their shades shy aspens look, 
Or where, with many a gurgling crook, 

It croons its woodland histories. 

I see leaf-shade and sun-fleck lend 

Their tremulous, sweet vicissitude 
To smooth, dark pool, to crinkling bend, — 
(Oh, stew him, Ann, as 't were your friend, 
With amorous solicitude !) 

I see him step with caution due, 
Soft as if shod with moccasins, 

Grave as in church, for who plies you, 

Sweet craft, is safe as in a pew 

From all our common stock o' sins. 

The unerring fly I see him cast, 

That as a rose-leaf falls as soft, 

A flash ! a whirl ! he has him fast ! 

We tyros, how that struggle last 
Confuses and appalls us oft. 

Unfluttered he : calm as the sky 
Looks on our tragi-comedies, 

This way and that he lets him fly, 

A sunbeam-shuttle, then to die 

Lands him, with cool aplomb, at ease. 

The friend who gave our board such gust, 
Life's care may he o'erstep it half, 

And, when Death hooks him, as he must, 

He '11 do it handsomely, I trust, 

And John H write his epitaph! 

Oh, born beneath the Fishes' sign, 

Of constellations happiest, 
May he somewhere with Walton dine, 
May Horace send him Massic wine, 

And Burns Scotch drink, the nappi- 
est! 

And when they come his deeds to weigh, 

And how he used the talents his, 
One trout-scale in the scales he '11 lay 
(If trout had scales), and 't will out- 
sway 
The wrong side of the balances. 



ODE TO HAPPINESS 

Spirit, that rarely comest now 

And only to contrast my gloom, 

Like rainbow-feathered birds that bloom 
A moment on some autumn bough 
That, with the spurn of their farewell, 
Sheds its last leaves, — thou once didst 
dwell 

With me year-long, and make intense 
To boyhood's wisely vacant days 
Their fleet but all-sufficing grace 

Of trustful inexperience, 

While soul could still transfigure sense, 
And thrill, as with love's first caress, 
At life's mere unexpectedness. 

Days when my blood would leap and run 
As full of sunshine as a breeze, 
Or spray tossed up by Summer seas 

That doubts if it be sea or sun! 
Days that flew swiftly like the band 

That played in Grecian games at strife, 
And passed from eager hand to hand 

The onward-dancing torch of life ! 

Wing-footed! thou abid'st with him 
Who asks it not; but he who hath 
Watched o'er the waves thy waning path, 
Shall nevermore behold returning 
Thy high-heaped canvas shoreward yearn- 
ing! 
Thou first reveal'st to us thy face 
Turned o'er the shoulder's parting grace, 
A moment glimpsed, then seen no 
more, — 
Thou whose swift footsteps we can trace 
Away from every mortal door. 

Nymph of the unreturning feet, 

How may I win thee back ? But no, 
I do thee wrong to call thee so; 

'T is I am changed, not thou art fleet: 

The man thy presence feels again, 

Not in the blood, but in the brain, 

Spirit, that lov'st the upper air 

Serene and passionless and rare, 

Such as on mountain heights we find 
And wide-viewed uplands of the mind; 

Or such as scorns to coil and sing 

Round any but the eagle's wing 

Of souls that with long upward beat 
Have won an undisturbed retreat 

WTiere, poised like winged victories, 

They mirror in relentless eyes 



3 2 4 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



The life broad - basking 'neath their 
feet, — 

Man ever with his Now at strife, 

Pained with first gasps of earthly air, 
Then praying Death the last to spare, 

Still fearful of the ampler life. 

Not unto them dost thou consent 

Who, passionless, can lead at ease 
A life of unalloyed content 

A life like that of land-locked seas, 
Who feel no elemental gush 
Of tidal forces, no fierce rush 

Of storm deep-grasping scarcely spent 

'Twixt continent and continent. 
Such quiet souls have never known 

Thy truer inspiration, thou 

Who lov'st to feel upon thy brow 
Spray from the plunging vessel thrown 

Grazing the tusked lee shore, the cliff 
That o'er the abrupt gorge holds its breath, 

Where the frail hair-breadth of an if 
Is all that sunders life and death: 
These, too, are cared for, and round these 
Bends her mild crook thy sister Peace; 

These in unvexed dependence lie, 

Each 'neath his strip of household sky; 
O'er these clouds wander, and the blue 
Hangs motionless the whole day through; 

Stars rise for them, and moons grow 
large 
And lessen in such tranquil wise 
As joys and sorrows do that rise 

Within their nature's sheltered marge; 
Their hours into each other flit 

Like the leaf-shadows of the vine 
And fig-tree under which they sit, 

And their still lives to heaven incline 
With an unconscious habitude, 

Unhistoried as smokes that rise 
From happy hearths and sight elude 

In kindred blue of morning skies. 

Wayward! when once we feel thy lack, 
'T is worse than vain to woo thee back! 

Yet there is one who seems to be 
Thine elder sister, in whose eyes 
A faint far northern light will rise 

Sometimes, and bring a dream of thee; 
She is not that for which youth hoped, 

But she hath blessings all her own, 
Thoughts pure as lilies newly oped, 

And faith to sorrow given alone: 
Almost I deem that it is thou 
Come back with graver matron brow, 



With deepened eyes and bated breath, 
Like one that somewhere hath met Death: 
But " No," she answers, " I am she 
Whom the gods love, Tranquillity; 
That other whom you seek forlorn 
Half earthly was; but I am born 
Of the immortals, and our race 
Wears still some sadness on its face: 

He wins me late, but keeps me long, 
Who, dowered with every gift of passion, 
In that fierce flame can forge and fashion 

Of sin and self the anchor strong; 
Can thence compel the driving force 
Of daily life's mechanic course, 
Nor less the nobler energies 
Of needful toil and culture wise; 
Whose soul is worth the tempter's lure 
Who can renounce, and yet endure, 
To him I come, not lightly wooed, 
But won by silent fortitude." 



VILLA FRANCA 

1859 

Wait a little : do we not wait ? 
Louis Napoleon is not Fate, 
Francis Joseph is not Time; 
There 's One hath swifter feet than Crime; 
Cannon-parliaments settle naught; 
Venice is Austria's, — whose is Thought ? 
Minie" is good, but, spite of change, 
Gutenberg's gun has the longest range. 

Spin, spin, Clotho, spin ! 

Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 

In the shadow, year out, year in, 

The silent headsman waits forever. 

Wait, we say: our years are long; 
Men are weak, but Man is strong; 
Since the stars first curved their rings, 
We have looked on many things; 
Great wars come and great wars go, 
Wolf-tracks light on polar snow; 
We shall see him come and gone, 
This second-hand Napoleon. 

Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 

Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 

In the shadow, year out, year in, 

The silent headsman waits forever. 

We saw the elder Corsican, 

And Clotho muttered as she span, 

While crowned lackeys bore the train, 



THE MINER 



325 



Of the pinchbeck Charlemagne : 
" Sister, stint not length of thread! 
Sister, stay the scissors dread! 
On Saint Helen's granite bleak, 
Hark, the vulture whets his beak! " 

Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 

Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 

In the shadow, year out, year in, 

The silent headsman waits forever. 

The Bonapartes, we know their bees 
That wade in honey red to the knees ; 
Their patent reaper, its sheaves sleep sound 
In dreamless garners underground: 
We know false glory's spendthrift race 
Pawning nations for feathers and lace; 
It may be short, it may be long, 
"'Tis reckoning -day!" sneers unpaid 
Wrong. 

Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 

Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 

In the shadow, year out, year in, 

The silent headsman waits forever. 

The Cock that wears the Eagle's skin 
Can promise what he ne'er could win; 
Slavery reaped for fine words sown, 
System for all, and rights for none, 
Despots atop, a wild clan below, 
Such is the Gaul from long ago; 
Wash the black from the Ethiop's face, 
Wash the past out of man or race ! 

Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 

Lachesis, twist ! and, Atropos, sever! 

In the shadow, year out, year in, 

The silent headsman waits forever. 

'Neath Gregory's throne a spider swings, 
And snares the people for the kings; 
" Luther is dead ; old quarrels pass ; 
The stake's black scars are healed with 

grass; " 
So dreamers prate; did man e'er live 
Saw priest or woman yet forgive ? 
But Luther's broom is left, and eyes 
Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies. 

Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 

Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 

In the shadow, year out, year in, 

The silent headsman waits forever. 

Smooth sails the ship of either realm, 
Kaiser and Jesuit at the helm ; 
We look down the depths, and mark 
Silent workers in the dark 



Building slow the sharp-tusked reefs, 
Old instincts hardening to new beliefs; 
Patience a little; learn to wait; 
Hours are long on the clock of Fate. 

Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 

Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 

Darkness is strong, and so is Sin, 

But surely God endures forever! 

THE MINER 

Down 'mid the tangled roots of things 
That coil about the central fire, 

I seek for that which giveth wings 
To stoop, not soar, to my desire. 

Sometimes I hear, as 't were a sigh, 
The sea's deep yearning far above, 

" Thou hast the secret not," I cry, 
" In deeper deeps is hid my Love." 

They think I burrow from the sun, 
In darkness, all alone, and weak; 

Such loss were gain if He were won, 
For 't is the sun's own Sun I seek. 

" The earth," they murmur, " is the tomb 
That vainly sought his life to prison ; 

Why grovel longer in the gloom ? 
He is not here; he hath arisen." 

More life for me where he hath lain 
Hidden while ye believed him dead, 

Than in cathedrals cold and vain, 
Built on loose sands of It is said. 

My search is for the living gold; 

Him I desire who dwells recluse, 
And not his image worn and old, 

Day-servant of our sordid use. 

If him I find not, yet I find 

The ancient joy of cell and church, 

The glimpse, the surety undefined, 
The unquenched ardor of the search. 

Happier to chase a flying goal 

Than to sit counting laurelled gains, 

To guess the Soul within the soul 
Than to be lord of what remains. 

Hide still, best Good, in subtile wise, 
Beyond my nature's utmost scope; 

Be ever absent from mine eyes 
To be twice present in my hope ! 



326 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



GOLD EGG: A DREAM-FANTASY 

HOW A STUDENT IN SEARCH OF THE 
BEAUTIFUL FELL ASLEEP IN DRESDEN 
OVER HERR PROFESSOR DOCTOR VI- 
SCHER'S WISSENSCHAFT DES SCHONEN, 
AND WHAT CAME THEREOF 

I swam with undulation soft, 

Adrift on Vischer's ocean, 
And, froni iny cockboat up aloft, 
Sent down my mental plummet oft 

In hope to reach a notion. 

But from the metaphysic sea 

No bottom was forthcoming, 
And all the while (how drearily !) 
In one eternal note of B 

My German stove kept humming. 

" What 's Beauty ? " mused I; "is it told 

By synthesis ? analysis ? 
Have you not made us lead of gold ? 
To feed your crucible, not sold 

Our temple's sacred chalices ? " 

Then o'er my senses came a change; 

My book seemed all traditions, 
Old legends of profoundest range, 
Diablery, and stories strange 

Of goblins, elves, magicians. 

Old gods in modern saints I found, 
Old creeds in strange disguises; 
I thought them safely underground, 
And here they were, all safe and sound, 
Without a sign of phthisis. 

Truth was, my outward eyes were closed, 

Although I did not know it; 
Deep into dream-land I had dozed, 
And thus was happily transposed 

From proser into poet. 

So what I read took flesh and blood, 

And turned to living creatures : 
The words were but the dingy bud 
That bloomed, like Adam, from the mud, 
To human forms and features. 

I saw how Zeus was lodged once more 

By Baucis and Philemon; 
The text said, " Not alone of yore, 
But every day, at every door 

Knocks still the masking Demon." 



Daimon 't was printed in the book 

And, as I read it slowly, 
The letters stirred and changed, and took 
Jove's stature, the Olympian look 

Of painless melancholy. 

He paused upon the threshold worn: 
" With coin I cannot pay you ; 

Yet would I fain make some return; 

The gift for cheapness do not spurn, 
Accept this hen, I pray you. 

" Plain feathers wears my Hemera, 

And has from ages olden; 
She makes her nest in common hay, 
And yet, of all the birds that lay, 

Her eggs alone are golden." 

He turned, and could no more be seen; 

Old Baucis stared a moment, 
Then tossed poor Partlet on the green, 
And with a tone, half jest, half spleen, 

Thus made her housewife's comment: 

" The stranger had a queerish face, 

His smile was hardly pleasant, 
And, though he meant it for a grace, 
Yet this old hen of barnyard race 
Was but a stingy present. 

' ' She 's quite too old for laying eggs, 

Nay, even to make a soup of; 
One only needs to see her legs, — 
You might as well boil down the pegs 

I made the brood-hen's coop of ! 

" Some eighteen score of such do I 

Raise every year, her sisters; 
Go, in the woods your fortunes try, 
All day for one poor earthworm pry, 

And scratch your toes to blisters ! " 

Philemon found the rede was good, 

And, turning on the poor hen, 
He clapt his hands, and stamped, and 

shooed, 
Hunting the exile tow'rd the wood, 

To house with snipe and moor-hen. 

A poet saw and cried: " Hold ! hold ! 

What are you doing, madman ? 
Spurn you more wealth than can be 

told, 
The fowl that lays the eggs of gold, 

Because she 's plainly clad, man ? " 



A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO A FRIEND 



327 



To him Philemon: " 1 '11 not balk 

Thy will with any shackle; 
Wilt add a burden to thy walk ? 
There ! take her without further talk: 

You 're both but fit to cackle ! " 

But scarce the poet touched the bird, 

It swelled to stature regal; 
And when her cloud-wide wings she stirred, 
A whisper as of doom was heard, 

'T was Jove's bolt-bearing eagle. 

As when from far-off cloud-bergs springs 

A crag, and, hurtling under, 
From cliff to cliff the rumor flings, 
So she from flight-foreboding wings 

Shook out a murmurous thunder. 

She gripped the poet to her breast, 

And ever, upward soaring, 
Earth seemed a new moon in the west, 
And then one light among the rest 

Where squadrons lie at mooring. 

How tell to what heaven hallowed seat 

The eagle bent his courses ? 
The waves that on its bases beat, 
The gales that round it weave and fleet, 

Are life's creative forces. 

Here was the bird's primeval nest, 

High on a promontory 
Star-pharosed, where she takes her rest 
To brood new aeons 'neath her breast, 

The future's unfledged glory. 

I know not how, but I was there 

All feeling, hearing, seeing; 
It was not wind that stirred my hair 
But living breath, the essence rare 

Of unembodied being. 

And in the nest an egg of gold 

Lay soft in self-made lustre, 
Gazing whereon, what depths untold 
Within, what marvels manifold, 

Seemed silently to muster ! 

Daily such splendors to confront 

Is still to me and you sent ? 
It glowed as when Saint Peter's front, 
Illumed, forgets its stony wont, 

And seems to throb translucent. 



One saw therein the life of man, 

(Or so the poet found it,) 
The yolk and white, conceive who can, 
Were the glad earth, that, floating, span 

In the glad heaven around it. 

I knew this as one knows in dream, 

Where no effects to causes 
Are chained as in our work-day scheme, 
And then was wakened by a scream 

That seemed to come from Baucis. 

" Bless Zeus ! " she cried, " I 'm safe be- 
low ! " 

First pale, then red as coral; 
And I, still drowsy, pondered slow, 
And seemed to find, but hardly know, 

Something like this for moral. 

Each day the world is born anew 

For him who takes it rightly; 
Not fresher that which Adam knew, 
Not sweeter that whose moonlit dew 

Entranced Arcadia nightly. 

Rightly ? That 's simply: 't is to see 
Some substance casts these shadows 
Which we call Life and History, 
That aimless seem to chase and flee 
Like wind-gleams over meadows. 

Simply ? That 's nobly : 't is to know 

That God may still be met with, 
Nor groweth old, nor doth bestow 
These senses fine, this brain aglow, 
To grovel and forget with. 

Beauty, Herr Doctor, trust in me, 

No chemistry will win you; 
Charis still rises from the sea: 
If you can't find her, might it be 

Because you seek within you ? 

A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO A 
FRIEND 

The friend was Miss Jane Norton, sister of 
Mr. C. E. Norton. 

Alike I hate to be your debtor, 
Or write a mere perfunctory letter; 
For letters, so it seems to me, 
Our careless quintessence should be, 
Our real nature's truant play 



328 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



When Consciousness looks t' other way; 
Not drop by drop, with watchful skill, 
Gathered in Art's deliberate still, 
But life's insensible completeness 
Got as the ripe grape gets its sweetness, 
As if it had a way to fuse 
The golden sunlight into juice. 
Hopeless my mental pump I try, 
The boxes hiss, the tube is dry; 
As those petroleum wells that spout 
Awhile like M. C.'s, then give out, 
My spring, once full as Arethusa, 
Is a mere bore as dry 's Creusa; 
And yet you ask me why I 'm glum, 
And why my graver Muse is dumb. 
Ah me ! I 've reasons manifold 
Condensed in one, — I 'm getting old ! 

When life, once past its fortieth year, 
Wheels up its evening hemisphere, 
The mind's own shadow, which the boy 
Saw onward point to hope and joy, 
Shifts round, irrevocably set 
Tow'rd morning's loss and vain regret 
And, argue with it as we will, 
The clock is unconverted still. 

" But count the gains," I hear you say, 
" Which far the seeming loss outweigh; 
Friendships built firm 'gainst flood and 

wind 
On rock-foundations of the mind; 
Knowledge instead of scheming hope; 
For wild adventure, settled scope; 
Talents, from surface-ore profuse, 
Tempered and edged to tools for use; 
Judgment, for passion's headlong whirls; 
Old sorrows crystalled into pearls; 
Losses by patience turned to gains, 
Possessions now, that once were pains; 
Joy's blossom gone, as go it must, 
To ripen seeds of faith and trust ; 
Why heed a snow-flake on the roof 
If fire within keep Age aloof, 
Though blundering north-winds push and 

strain 
With palms benumbed against the pane ? " 

My dear old Friend, you're very wise; 
We always are with others' eyes, 
And see so clear ! (our neighbor's deck on) 
What reef the idiot 's sure to wreck on; 
Folks when they learn how life has quizzed 

'em 
Are fain to make a shift with Wisdom, 



And, finding she nor breaks nor bends, 
Give her a letter to their friends. 
Draw passion's torrent whoso will 
Through sluices smooth to turn a mill, 
And, taking solid toll of grist, 
Forget the rainbow in the mist, 
The exulting leap, the aimless haste 
Scattered in iridescent waste; 
Prefer who likes the sure esteem 
To cheated youth's midsummer dream, 
When every friend was more than Damon, 
Each quicksand safe to build a fame on; 
Believe that prudence snug excels 
Youth's gross of verdant spectacles, 
Through which earth's withered stubble 

seen 
Looks autumn-proof as painted green, — 
I side with Moses 'gainst the masses, 
Take you the drudge, give me the glasses f 
And, for your talents shaped with practice, 
Convince me first that such the fact is; 
Let whoso likes be beat, poor fool, 
On life's hard stithy to a tool, 
Be whoso will a ploughshare made, 
Let me remain a jolly blade ! 

What 's Knowledge, with her stocks and 

lands, 
To gay Conjecture's yellow strands ? 
What 's watching her slow flock's increase 
To ventures for the golden fleece ? 
What her deep ships, safe under lee, 
To youth's light craft, that drinks the sea, 
For Flying Islands making sail, 
And failing where 't is gain to fail ? 
Ah me ! Experience (so we 're told), 
Time's crucible, turns lead to gold; 
Yet what 's experience won but dross, 
Cloud-gold transmuted to our loss ? 
What but base coin the best event 
To the untried experiment ? 

'T was an old couple, says the poet, 

That lodged the gods and did not know it; 

Youth sees and knows them as they were 

Before Olympus' top was bare; 

From Swampscot's flats his eye divine 

Sees Venus rocking on the brine, 

With lucent limbs, that somehow scatter a 

Charm that turns Doll to Cleopatra ; 

Bacchus (that now is scarce induced 

To give Eld's lagging blood a boost), 

With cymbals' clang and pards to draw 

him, 
Divine as Ariadne saw him, 



AN EMBER PICTURE 



329 



Storms through Youth's pulse with all his 

train 
And wins new Indies in his brain; 
Apollo (with the old a trope, 
A sort of finer Mister Pope), 
Apollo — hut the Muse forbids : 
At his approach cast down thy lids, 
And think it joy enough to hear 
Far off his arrows singing clear; 
He knows enough who silent knows 
The quiver chiming as he goes; 
He tells too much who e'er betrays 
The shining Archer's secret ways. 

Dear Friend, you 're right and I am 

wrong; 
My quibbles are not worth a song, 
And I sophistically tease 
My fancy sad to tricks like these. 
I could not cheat you if I would; 
You know me and my jesting mood, 
Mere surface-foam, for pride concealing 
The purpose of my deeper feeling. 
I have not spilt one drop of joy 
Poured in the senses of the boy, 
Nor Nature fails my walks to bless 
With all her golden inwardness; 
And as blind nestlings, unafraid, 
Stretch up wide-mouthed to every shade 
By which their downy dream is stirred, 
Taking it for the mother-bird, 
So, when God's shadow, which is light, 
Unheralded, by day or night, 
My wakening instincts falls across, 
Silent as sunbeams over moss, 
In my heart's nest half-conscious things 
Stir with a helpless sense of wings, 
Lift themselves up, and tremble long 
With premonitions sweet of song. 

Be patient, and perhaps (who knows ?) 

These may be winged one day like those; 

If thrushes, close-embowered to sing, 

Pierced through with June's delicious sting; 

If swallows, their half-hour to run 

Star-breasted in the setting sun. 

At first they 're but the unfledged proem, 

Or songless schedule of a poem; 

When from the shell they 're hardly dry 

If some folks thrust them forth, must I ? 

But let me end with a comparison 
Never yet hit upon by e'er a son 
Of our American Apollo, 



(And there 's where I shall beat them hol- 
low, 
If he indeed 's no courtly St. John, 
But, as West said, a Mohawk Injun.) 
A poem 's like a cruise for whales : 
Through untried seas the hunter sails, 
His prow dividing waters known 
To the blue iceberg's hulk alone; 
At last, on farthest edge of day, 
He markc the smoky puff of spray; 
Then with bent oars the shallop flies 
To where the basking quarry lies; 
Then the excitement of the strife, 
The crimsoned waves, — ah, this is life! 

But, the dead plunder once secured 
And safe beside the vessel moored, 
All that had stirred the blood before 
Is so much blubber, nothing more, 
(I mean no pun, nor image so 
Mere sentimental verse, you know,) 
And all is tedium, smoke, and soil, 
In trying out the noisome oil. 

Yes, this is life! And so the bard 
Through briny deserts, never scarred 
Since Noah's keel, a subject seeks, 
And lies upon the watch for weeks; 
That once harpooned and helpless lying, 
What follows is but weary trying. 

Now I 've a notion, if a poet 
Beat up for themes, his verse will show it; 
I wait for subjects that hunt me, 
By day or night won't let me be, 
And hang about me like a curse, 
Till they have made me into verse, 
From line to line my fingers tease 
Beyond my knowledge, as the bees 
Build no new cell till those before 
With limpid summer-sweet run o'er; 
Then, if I neither sing nor shine, 
Is it the subject's fault, or mine ? 



AN EMBER PICTURE 

How strange are the freaks of memory I 
The lessons of life we forget, 

While a trifle, a trick of color, 
In the wonderful web is set, — 

Set by some mordant of fancy, 
And, spite of the wear and tear 



33° 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



Of time or distance or trouble, 
Insists on its right to be there. 

A chance had brought us together; 

Our talk was of matters-of -course ; 
We were nothing, one to the other, 

But a short half -hour's resource. 

We spoke of French acting and actors, 

And their easy, natural way: 
Of the weather, for it was raining 

As we drove home from the play. 

We debated the social nothings 
We bore ourselves so to discuss; 

The thunderous rumors of battle 
Were silent the while for us. 

Arrived at her door, we left her 
With a drippingly hurried adieu, 

And our wheels went crunching the gravel 
Of the oak-darkened avenue. 

As we drove away through the shadow, 
The candle she held in the door 

From rain-varnished tree-trunk to tree- 
trunk 
Flashed fainter, and flashed no more; — 

Flashed fainter, then wholly faded 
Before we had passed the wood; 

But the light of the face behind it 
Went with me and stayed for good. 

The vision of scarce a moment, 
And hardly marked at the time, 

It comes unbidden to haunt me, 
Like a scrap of ballad-rhyme. 

Had she beauty? Well, not what they call 
so; 

You may find a thousand as fair; 
And yet there 's her face in my memory 

With no special claim to be there. 

As I sit sometimes in the twilight, 
And call back to life in the coals 

Old faces and hopes and fancies 

Long buried, (good rest to their souls!) 

Her face shines out in the embers; 

I see her holding the light, 
And hear the crunch of the gravel 

And the sweep of the rain that night. 



'T is a face that can never grow older, 
That never can part with its gleam, 

'T is a gracious possession forever, 
For is it not all a dream ? 



TO H. W. L. 

ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 27TH FEBRUARY, 1 867 

" Elmwood, February 27, 1867. 

"My dear Longfellow, — On looking 
back, I find that our personal intercourse is now 
of nearly thirty years' date. It began on your 
part in a note acknowledging my Class Poem 
much more kindly than it deserved. Since 
then it has ripened into friendship, and there 
has never been a jar between us. If there had 
been, it would certainly have been my fault 
and not yours. Friendship is called the wine 
of life, and there certainly is a stimulus in it 
that warms and inspires as we grow older. 
Ours should have some body to have kept so 
long. 

" I planned you a little surprise in the Ad- 
vertiser for your birthday breakfast. I hope 
my nosegay did not spoil the flavor of your 
coffee. It is a hard thing to make one that 
will wholly please, for some flowers will not 
bear to be handled without wilting, and the 
kind I have tried to make a pretty bunch of is 
of that variety. But let me hope the best from 
your kindness, if not from their color or per- 
fume. 

" In case they should please you (and be- 
cause there was one misprint in the Advertiser, 
and two phrases which I have now made more 
to my mind), I have copied them that you 
might have them in my own handwriting. In 
print, you see, I have omitted the tell-tale 
ciphers — not that there was anything to regret 
in them, for we have a proverbial phrase ' like 
sixty ' which implies not only unabated but ex- 
traordinary vigor. 

" Wishing you as many happy returns as a 
wise man should desire, I remain always affec- 
tionately yours, J. R. L." Letters I. 378, 379. 

I need not praise the sweetness of his song, 
Where limpid verse to limpid verse 
succeeds 
Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest 

he wrong 
The new moon's mirrored skiff, he slides 
along, 
Full without noise, and whispers in his 
reeds. 



THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY 



33* 



With loving breath of all the winds his 
name 
Is blown about the world, but to his 
friends 
A sweeter secret hides behind his fame, 
And Love steals shyly through the loud 
acclaim 
To murmur a God bless you I and there 
ends. 

As I muse backward up the checkered 
years 
Wherein so much was given, so much 
was lost, 
Blessings in both kinds, such as cheapen 

tears, — 
But hush ! this is not for profaner ears; 
Let them drink molten pearls nor dream 
the cost. 

Some suck up poison from a sorrow's core, 
As naught but nightshade grew upon 
earth's ground; 
Love turned all his to heart's-ease, and the 

more 
Fate tried his bastions, she but forced a 
door 
Leading to sweeter manhood and more 
sound. 

Even as a wind-waved fountain's swaying 

shade 

Seems of mixed race, a gray wraith shot 

with sun, 

So through his trial faith translucent rayed 

Till darkness, half disnatured so, betrayed 

A heart of sunshine that would fain 



Surely if skill in song the shears may stay 
And of its purpose cheat the charmed 
abyss, 
If our poor life be lengthened by a lay, 
He shall not go, although his presence 
may, 
And the next age in praise shall double 
this. 

Long days be his, and each as lusty-sweet 
As gracious natures find his song to be; 
May Age steal on with sof tly-cadenced feet 
Falling in music, as for him were meet 
Whose choicest verse is harsher-toned 
than he ! 



THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE 
STUDY 

" While I was most unwell," Lowell wrote 
to a friend, September 21, 1875, " I could not 
find any reading- that would seclude me from 
myself till one day I bethought me of Cal- 
deron. I took down a volume of his plays, 
and in half an hour was completely absorbed. 
He is surely one of the most marvellous of 
poets. I have recorded my debt to him in a 
poem, The Nightingale in the Study." 

" Come forth ! " my catbird calls to me, 
" And hear me sing a cavatina 

That, in this old familar tree, 
Shall hang a garden of Alcina. 

" These buttercups shall brim with wine 
Beyond all Lesbian juice or Massic; 

May not New England be divine ? 
My ode to ripening summer classic ? 

" Or, if to me you will not hark, 

By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing 

Till all the alder-coverts dark 

Seem sunshine-dappled with his sing- 
ing. 

" Come out beneath the unmastered sky, 
With its emancipating spaces, 

And learn to sing as well as I, 
Without premeditated graces. 

" What boot your many-volumed gains, 
Those withered leaves forever turning, 

To win, at best, for all your pains, 
A nature mummy-wrapt in learning ? 

" The leaves wherein true wisdom lies 
On living trees the sun are drinking; 

Those white clouds, drowsing through the 
skies, 
Grew not so beautiful by thinking. 

" ' Come out ! ' with me the oriole cries, 
Escape the demon that pursues you ! 

And, hark, the cuckoo weatherwise, 

Still hiding farther onward, wooes you." 

"Alas, dear friend, that, all my days, 
Hast poured from that syringa thicket 

The quaintly discontinuous lays 
To which I hold a season-ticket, 



33 2 



UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS 



" A season-ticket cheaply bought 
With a dessert of pilfered berries, 

And who so oft my soul hast caught 
With morn and evening voluntaries, 

" Deem me not faithless, if all day 
Among my dusty books I linger, 

No pipe, like thee, for June to play 
With fancy-led, half-conscious finger. 

" A bird is singing in my brain 

And bubbling o'er with mingled fan- 
cies, 
Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain 

Fed with the sap of old romances. 

" I ask no ampler skies than those 
His magic music rears above me, 

No falser friends, no truer foes, — 
And does not Dona Clara love me ? 

" Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars, 
A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing, 

Then silence deep with breathless stars, 
And overhead a white hand flashing. 

" O music of all moods and climes, 
Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly, 

Where still, between the Christian chimes, 
The Moorish cymbal tinkles faintly ! 

" O life borne lightly in the hand, 

For friend or foe with grace Castil- 
ian ! 
O valley safe in Fancy's land, 

Not tramped to mud yet by the mil- 
lion ! 

" Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale 
To his, my singer of all weathers, 

My Calderon, my nightingale, 

My Arab soul in Spanish feathers. 

" Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, 
And still, God knows, in purgatory, 

Give its best sweetness to all song, 
To Nature's self her better glory." 



IN THE TWILIGHT 

Men say the sullen instrument, 
That, from the Master's bow, 
With pangs of joy or woe, 



Feels music's soul through every fibre sent, 

Whispers the ravished strings 
More than he knew or meant ; 

Old summers in its memory glow ; 
The secrets of the wind it sings ; 
It hears the April-loosened springs ; 
And mixes with its mood 
All it dreamed when it stood 
In the murmurous pine-wood 
Long ago ! 

Thkmagical moonlight then 

Steeped every bough and cone ; 
The roar of the brook in the glen 

Came dim from the distance blown ; 
The wind through its glooms sang low, 
And it swayed to and fro 
With delight as it stood, 
In the wonderful wood, 
Long ago ! 

O my life, have we not had seasons 
That only said, Live and rejoice ? 
That asked not for causes and reasons, 
But made us all feeling and voice ? 
When we went with the winds in their 
blowing, 
When Nature and we were peers, 
And we seemed to share in the flowing 
Of the inexhaustible years ? 
Have we not from the earth drawn juices 
Too fine for earth's sordid uses ? 
Have I heard, have I seen 

All I feel, all I know ? 
Doth my heart overween ? 
Or could it have been 
Long ago ? 

Sometimes a breath floats by me, 

An odor from Dreamland sent, 
That makes the ghost seem nigh me 

Of a splendor that came and went, 
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not 

In what, diviner sphere, 
Of memories that stay not and go not, 

Like music heard once by an ear 
That cannot forget or reclaim it, 
A something so shy, it would shame it 

To make it a show, 
A something too vague, could I name it, 

For others to know, 
As if I had lived it or dreamed it, 
As if I had acted or schemed it, 
Long ago ! 



THE FOOT-PATH 



333 



And yet, could I live it over, 

This life that stirs in my brain, 
Could I be both maiden and lover, 
Moon and tide, bee and clover, 

As I seem to have been, once again, 
Could I but speak it and show it, 
This pleasure more sharp than pain, 
That baffles and lures me so, 
The world should once more have a poet, 
Such as it had 
In the ages glad, 
Long ago ! 



THE FOOT-PATH 

It mounts athwart the windy hill 

Through sallow slopes of upland bare, 

And Fancy climbs with foot-fall still 
Its narrowing curves that end in air. 

By day, a warmer-hearted blue 

Stoops softly to that topmost swell ; 

Its thread-like windings seem a clue 
To gracious climes where all is well. 

By night, far yonder, I surmise 

An ampler world than clips my ken, 

Where the great stars of happier skies 
Commingle nobler fates of men. 

I look and long, then haste me home, 
Still master of my secret rare ; 

Once tried, the path would end in Home, 
But now it leads me everywhere. 

Forever to the new it guides, 

From former good, old overmuch ; 

What Nature for her poets hides, 
'T is wiser to divine than clutch. 

The bird I list hath never come 
Within the scope of mortal ear ; 

My prying step would make him dumb, 
And the fair tree, his shelter, sear. 

Behind the hill, behind the sky, 

Behind my inmost thought, he sings ; 



No feet avail ; to hear it nigh, 

The song itself must lend the wings. 

Sing on, sweet bird close hid, and raise 
Those angel stairways in my brain, 

That climb from these low- vaulted days 
To spacious sunshines far from pain. 

Sing when thou wilt, enchantment fleet, 
I leave thy covert haunt untrod, 

And envy Science not her feat 
To make a twice-told tale of God. 

They said the fairies tript no more, 
And long ago that Pan was dead; 

'T was but that fools preferred to bore 
Earth's rind inch-deep for truth instead. 

Pan leaps and pipes all summer long, 
The fairies dance each full- mooned night, 

Would we but doff our lenses strong, 
And trust our wiser eyes' delight. 

City of Elf-land, just without 

Our seeing, marvel ever new, 
Glimpsed in fair weather, a sweet doubt 

Sketched-in, mirage-like, on the blue, 

I build thee in yon sunset cloud, 

Whose edge allures to climb the height; 
I hear thy drowned bells, inly-loud, 

From still pools dusk with dreams of 
night. 

Thy gates are shut to hardiest will, 

Thy countersign of long-lost speech, — 

Those fountained courts, those chambers 
still, 
Fronting Time's far East, who shall reach? 

I know not, and will never pry, 
But trust our human heart for all; 

Wonders that from the seeker fly 
Into an open sense may fall. 

Hide in thine own soul, and surprise 
The password of the unwary elves; 

Seek it, thou canst not bribe their spies; 
Unsought, they whisper it themselves. 



334 



POEMS OF THE WAR 



POEMS OF THE WAR 



THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD 

OCTOBER, l86l 

Lowell wrote at some length to C. E. Norton 
concerning the production of this poem. 

Elmwood, Oct. 12, 1861. 
. . . You urged me to read poetry — to feed 
myself on bee bread — so that I might get into 
the mood of writing some. Well, I have n't been 
reading any, but I have written something — 
whether poetry or no I cannot tell yet. But I 
want you to like it if you can. Leigh Hunt 
speaks somewhere of our writing things for par- 
ticular people, and wondering as we write if 
such or such a one will like it. Just so I 
thought of you, after I had written — for while 
I was writing I was wholly absorbed. I had 
just two days allowed me by Fields for the 
November Atlantic, and I got it done. It had 
been in my head some time, and when you see 
it you will remember my having spoken to you 
about it. Indeed, I owe it to you, for the hint 
came from one of those books of Souvestre's 
you lent me — the Breton legends. The writ- 
ing took hold of me enough to leave me tired 
out and to satisfy me entirely as to what was 
the original of my head and back pains. But 
whether it is good or not, I am not yet far 
enough off to say. But do like it, if you can. 
Fields says it is " splendid," with tears in his 
eyes — but then I read it to him, which is half 
the battle. I began it as a lyric, but it would 
be too aphoristic for that, and finally flatly 
refused to sing at any price. So I submit- 
ted, took to pentameters, and only hope the 
thoughts are good enough to be preserved in 
the ice of the colder and almost glacier-slow 
measure. I think I have done well — in some 
stanzas at least — and not wasted words. It 
is about present matters — but abstract enough 
to be above the newspapers. . . . 

Along a river-side, I know not where, 
I walked one night in mystery of dream; 
A chill creeps curdling yet beneath my 

hair, 
To think what chanced me by the pallid 

gleam 
Of a moon-wraith that waned through 

haunted air. 



Pale fireflies pulsed within the meadow- 
mist 

Their halos, wavering thistle downs of 
light; 

The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin 
tryst, 

Laughed; and the echoes, huddling in af- 
fright, 

Like Odin's hounds, fled baying down the 
night. 

Then all was silent, till there smote my 

ear 
A movement in the stream that checked 

my breath: 
Was it the slow plash of a wading deer ? 
But something said, "This water is of 

Death ! 
The Sisters wash a shroud, — ill thing to 

hear ! " 

I, looking then, beheld the ancient Three 
Known to the Greek's and to the North- 
man's creed, 
That sit in shadow of the mystic Tree, 
Still crooning, as they weave their endless 

brede, 
One song: "Time was, Time is, and Time 
shall be." 

No wrinkled crones were they, as 1 had 

deemed, 
But fair as yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, 
To mourner, lover, poet, ever seemed; 
Something too high for joy, too deep for 

sorrow, 
Thrilled in their tones, and from their 

faces gleamed. 

" Still men and nations reap as they have 

strawn," 
So sang they, working at their task the 

while ; 
" The fatal raiment must be cleansed ere 

dawn: 
For Austria ? Italy ? the Sea - Queen's 

isle? 
O'er what quenched grandeur must our 

shroud be drawn ? 



THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD 



335 



" Or is it for a younger, fairer corse, 
That gathered States like children round 

his knees, 
That tamed the wave to be his posting- 
horse, 
Feller of forests, linker of the seas, 
Bridge-builder, hammerer, youngest son of 
Thor's ? 

"What make we, murmur'st thou? and 

what are we ? 
When empires must be wound, we bring 

the shroud, 
The time-old web of the implacable Three: 
Is it too coarse for him, the young and 

proud ? 
Earth's mightiest deigned to wear it, — 

why not he ? " 

" Is there no hope? " I moaned, " so strong, 

so fair! 
Our Fowler whose proud bird would brook 

erewhile 
No rival's swoop in all our western air! 
Gather the ravens, then, in funeral file 
For him, life's morn yet golden in his hair? 

"Leave me not hopeless, ye unpitying 

dames! 
I see, half seeing. Tell me, ye who scanned 
The stars, Earth's elders, still must noblest 

aims 
Be traced upon oblivious ocean-sands? 
Must Hesper join the wailing ghosts of 

names ? " 

" When grass-blades stiffen with red battle- 
dew, 

Ye deem we choose the victor and the slain: 

Say, choose we them that shall be leal and 
true 

To the heart's longing, the high faith of 
brain? 

Yet there the victory lies, if ye but knew. 

"Three roots bear up Dominion: Know- 
ledge, Will, — 

These twain are strong, but stronger yet 
the third, — 

Obedience, — 't is the great tap-root that 
still, 

Knit round the rock of Duty, is not stirred, 

Though Heaven - loosed tempests spend 
their utmost skill. 



" Is the doom sealed for Hesper? 'T is not 
we 

Denounce it, but the Law before all time: 

The brave makes danger opportunity; 

The waverer, paltering with the chance sub- 
lime, 

Dwarfs it to peril: which shall Hesper be? 

" Hath he let vultures climb his eagle's 

seat 
To make Jove's bolts purveyors of their 

maw ? 
Hath he the Many's plaudits found more 

sweet 
Than Wisdom ? held Opinion's wind for 

Law? 
Then let him hearken for the doomster's 

feet! 

" Rough are the steps, slow-hewn in flint- 
iest rock, 

States climb to power by; slippery those 
with gold 

Down which they stumble to eternal mock: 

No chafferer's hand shall long the sceptre 
hold, 

Who, given a Fate to shape, would sell the 
block. 

" We sing old Sagas, songs of weal and woe, 
Mystic because too cheaply understood; 
Dark sayings are not ours ; men hear and 

know, 
See Evil weak, see strength alone in Good, 
Yet hope to stem God's fire with walls of 

tow. 

" Time Was unlocks the riddle of Time Is, 
That offers choice of glory or of gloom; 
The solver makes Time Shall Be surely 

his. 
But hasten, Sisters ! for even now the tomb 
Grates its slow hinge and calls from the 

abyss." 

" But not for him," I cried, " not yet for 

him, 
Whose large horizon, westering, star by 

star 
Wins from the void to where on Ocean's 

rim 
The sunset shuts the world with golden bar, 
Not yet his thews shall fail, his eye grow 

dim! 



33^ 



POEMS OF THE WAR 



" His shall be larger manhood, saved for 
those 

That walk uublenching through the trial- 
fires ; 

Not suffering, but faint heart, is worst of 
woes, 

And he no base-born son of craven sires, 

Whose eye need blench confronted with his 
foes. 

" Tears may be ours, but proud, for those 
who win 

Death's royal purple in the foeman's lines; 

Peace, too, brings tears ; and mid the bat- 
tle-din, 

The wiser ear some text of God divines, 

For the sheathed blade may rust with 
darker sin. 

" God, give us peace! not such as lulls to 

sleep, 
But sword on thigh, and brow with purpose 

knit! 
And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep, 
Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit, 
And her leashed thunders gathering for 

their leap!" 

So cried I with clenched hands and passion- 
ate pain, 

Thinking of dear ones by Potomac's side ; 

Again the loon laughed mocking, and 
again 

The echoes bayed far down the night and 
died, 

While waking I recalled my wandering 
brain. 

TWO SCENES FROM THE LIFE 
OF BLONDEL 

AUTUMN, 1863 

Scene I. — Near a castle in Germany. 

'T were no hard task, perchance, to win 

The popular laurel for my song ; 
'T were only to comply with sin, 

And own the crown, though snatched by 
wrong: 
Rather Truth's chaplet let me wear, 

Though sharp as death its thorns may 
sting; 
Loyal to Loyalty, I bear 

No badge but of my rightful king. 



Patient by town and tower I wait, 

Or o'er the blustering moorland go; 
I buy no praise at cheaper rate, 

Or what faint hearts may fancy so; 
For me, no joy in lady's bower, 

Or hall, or tourney, will I sing, 
Till the slow stars wheel round the hour 

That crowns my hero and my king. 

While all the land runs red with strife, 

And wealth is won by pedler-crimes, 
Let who will find content in life 

And tinkle in unmanly rhymes; 
I wait and seek ; through dark and light, 

Safe in my heart my hope I bring, 
Till I once more my faith may plight 

To him my whole soul owns her king. 

When power is filched by drone and dolt, 

And, with caught breath and flashing eye, 
Her knuckles whitening round the bolt, 

Vengeance leans eager from the sky, 
While this and that the people guess, 

And to the skirts of praters cling, 
Who court the crowd they should compress, 

I turn in scorn to seek my king. 

Shut in what tower of darkling chance 

Or dungeon of a narrow doom, 
Dream'st thou of battle-axe and lance 

That for the Cross make crashing room ? 
Come! with hushed breath the battle waits 

In the wild van thy mace's swing; 
While doubters parley with their fates, 

Make thou thine own and ours, my king! 

O strong to keep upright the old, 

And wise to buttress with the new, 
Prudent, as only are the bold, 

Clear-eyed, as only are the true, 
To foes benign, to friendship stern, 

Intent to imp Law's broken wing, 
Who would not die, if death might earn 

The right to kiss thy hand, my king ? 

Scene II. — An Inn near the Chateau of 
Chains. 

Well, the whole thing is over, and here I sit 
With one arm in a sling and a milk-score 
of gashes, 
And this flagon of Cyprus must e'en warm 
my wit, 
Since what's left of youth's flame is a 
head flecked with ashes. 



MEMORISE POSITUM 



337 



I remember I sat in this very same inn, — 
I was young then, and one young man 
thought I was handsome, — 
I had found out what prison Bang Richard 
was in, 
And was spurring for England to push on 
the ransom. 

How I scorned the dull souls that sat guz- 
zling around 
And knew not my secret nor recked my 
derision! 
Let the world sink or swim, John or Richard 
be crowned, 
All one, so the beer-tax got lenient revi- 
sion. 
How little I dreamed, as I tramped up and 
down, 
That granting our wish one of Fate's 
saddest jokes is! 
I had mine with a vengeance, — my king 
got his crown, 
And made his whole business to break 
other f olks's. 

I might as well join in the safe old turn, 
turn: 
A hero 's an excellent loadstar, — but, 
bless ye, 
What infinite odds 'twixt a hero to come 

And your only too palpable hero in esse ! 
Precisely the odds (such examples are rife) 
'Twixt the poem conceived and the rhyme 
we make show of, 
'Twixt the boy's morning dream and the 
wake-up of life, 
'Twixt the Blondel God meant and a 
Blondel I know of! 

But the world 's better off, I 'm convinced 
of it now, 
Than if heroes, like buns, could be bought 
for a penny 
To regard all mankind as their haltered 
milch-cow, 
And just care for themselves. Well, 
God cares for the many; 
For somehow the poor old Earth blunders 
along, 
Each son of hers adding his mite of un- 
fitness, 
And, choosing the sure way of coming out 
wrong, 
Gets to port as the next generation will 
witness. 



You think her old ribs have come all crash- 
ing through, 
If a whisk of Fate's broom snap your 
cobweb asunder; 
But her rivets were clinched by a wiser 
than you, 
And our sins cannot push the Lord's right 
hand from under. 
Better one honest man who can wait for 
God's mind 
In our poor shifting scene here though 
heroes were plenty! 
Better one bite, at forty, of Truth's bitter 
rind, 
Than the hot wine that gushed from the 
vintage of twenty! 

I see it all now: when I wanted a king, 
'T was the kingship that failed in myself 
I was seeking, — 
'T is so much less easy to do than to sing, 
So much simpler to reign by a proxy 
than be king! 
Yes, I think I do see : after all 's said and 
sung, 
Take this one rule of life and you never 
will rue it, — 
'T is but do your own duty and hold your 
own tongue 
And Blondel were royal himself, if he 
knew it! 



MEMORLE POSITUM 

R. G. SHAW 

In a letter to Colonel Shaw's mother, written 
August 28, 1863, Lowell says : " I have been 
writing- something about Robert ; and if, after 
keeping a little while, it should turn out to be 
a poem I shall print it, but not unless I think 
it some way worthy of what I feel, however, 
for the best verse falls short of noble living 
and dying such as his. I would rather have 
my name known and blest, as his will be, 
through all the hovels of an outcast race, than 
blaring from all the trumpets of repute." He 
kept the poem three months and then wrote 
to Mr. Fields, — " You know I owe you a 
poem — two in my reckoning, and here is one 
of them. If this is not to your mind, I can 
hammer you out another. I have a feeling 
that some of it is good — but is it too long ? I 
want to fling my leaf on dear Shaw's grave. 
Perhaps I was wrong in stiffening the feet of 
my verses a little, in order to give them a kind 



33& 



POEMS OF THE WAR 



of slow funeral tread. But I conceived it so, 
and so it would be. I wanted the poem a 
little monumental, perhaps I have made it obit- 
uary. But tell me just how it strikes you, 
and don't be afraid of my nerves. They can 
stand much in the way of friendly frankness, 
and besides, I find I am acquiring a vice of 
modesty as I grow older." 

In another letter, when speaking of the dis- 
tinction between odes for the closet and odes 
for recitation, he says : " I chose my measures 
with my ears open. So I did in writing the 
poem on Rob Shaw. That is regular because 
meant only to be read, and because also I 
thought it should have in the form of its stanza 
something of the formality of an epitaph." 

When, in the last stanza, Lowell wrote 

" I write of one, 

While with dim eyes I think of three," 

the reader recalls that moving passage in No. X. 
of the second series of Biglow Papers, where 
Mr. Hosea Biglow in his homely speech bursts 
forth : — 

" Why, hain't I held 'em on my knee ? 
Did n't I love to see 'em growin', 
Three likely lads ez wal could be," — 

and one knows of whom Lowell was thinking. 

I 

Beneath the trees, 
My lifelong friends in this dear spot, 
Sad now for eyes that see them not, 
I hear the autumnal breeze 
Wake the dry leaves to sigh for gladness 

gone, 
Whispering vague omens of oblivion, 

Hear, restless as the seas, 
Time's grim feet rustling through the with- 
ered grace 
Of many a spreading realm and strong- 
stemmed race, 
Even as my own through these. 

Why make we moan 
For loss that doth enrich us yet 
With upward yearnings of regret ? 

Bleaker than unmossed stone 
Our lives were but for this immortal gain 
Of unstilled longing and inspiring pain ! 

As thrills of long-hushed tone 
Live in the viol, so our souls grow fine 
With keen vibrations from the touch divine 

Of noble natures gone. 

'T were indiscreet 
To vex the shy and sacred grief 
With harsh obtrusions of relief; 



Yet, Verse, with noiseless feet, 
Go whisper : " This death hath far choicer 

ends 
Than slowly to impearl in hearts of friends ; 

These obsequies 't is meet 
Not to seclude in closets of the heart, 
But, church-like, with wide doorways, to 
impart 
Even to the heedless street." 



Brave, good, and true, 
I see him stand before me now, 
And read again on that young brow, 
Where every hope was new, 
How sweet were life! Yet, by the mouth 

firm-set, 
And look made up for Duty's utmost debt, 

I could divine he knew 
That death within the sulphurous hostile 

lines, 
In the mere wreck of nobly-pitched designs, 
Plucks heart's-ease, and not rue. 

Happy their end 
Who vanish down life's evening stream 
Placid as swans that drift in dream 
Round the next river-bend ! 
Happy long life, with honor at the close, 
Friends' painless tears, the softened thought 
of foes ! 
And yet, like him, to spend 
All at a gush, keeping our first faith sure 
From mid-life's doubt and eld's content- 
ment poor, 
What more could Fortune send ? 

Right in the van, 
On the red rampart's slippery swell, 
With heart that beat a charge, he fell 

Foe ward, as fits a man ; 
But the high soul burns on to light men's 

feet 
Where death for noble ends makes dying 
sweet ; 
His life her crescent's span 
Orbs full with share in their undarkening 

days 
Who ever climbed the battailous steeps of 
praise 
Since valor's praise began. 



His life's expense 
Hath won him coeternal youth 



ON BOARD THE '76 



339 



With the immaculate prime of Truth ; 

While we, who make pretence 
At living on, and wake and eat and sleep, 
And life's stale trick by repetition keep, 

Our fickle permanence 
(A poor leaf -shadow on a brook, whose play 
Of busy idlesse ceases with our day) 

Is the mere cheat of sense. 

We bide our chance, 
Unhappy, and make terms with Fate 
A little more to let us wait ; 
He leads for aye the advance, 
Hope's forlorn-hopes that plant the des- 
perate good 
For nobler Earths and days of manlier 
mood ; 
Our wall of circumstance 
Cleared at a bound, he flashes o'er the 

fight, 
A saintly shape of fame, to cheer the 
right 
And steel each wavering glance. 

I write of one, 
While with dim eyes I think of three ; 
Who weeps not others fair and brave as 
he? 
Ah, when the fight is won, 
Dear Land, whom triflers now make bold to 

scorn, 
(Thee ! from whose forehead Earth awaits 
her morn,) 
How nobler shall the sun 
Flame in thy sky, how braver breathe thy 

air, 
That thou bred'st children who for thee 
could dare 
And die as thine have done ! 



ON BOARD THE '76 

WRITTEN FOR MR. BRYANT'S SEVEN- 
TIETH BIRTHDAY 

NOVEMBER 3, 1864 

In a letter written a score of years before, 
Lowell characterizes this poem as " a kind of 
palinode to what I said of him in the Fable for 
Critics, which has something of youth's infalli- 
bility in it, or at any rate of youth's irrespon- 
sibility." 



Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea, 
Her rudder gone, her mainmast o'er the 
side ; 
Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch stag- 
gering free, 
Trailed threads of priceless crimson 
through the tide ; 
Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon 
torn, 
We lay, awaiting morn. 

Awaiting morn, such morn as mocks de- 
spair ; 
And she that bare the promise of the 
world 
Within her sides, now hopeless, helmless, 
bare, 
At random o'er the wildering waters 
hurled ; 
The reek of battle drifting slow alee 
Not sullener than we. 

Morn came at last to peer into our woe, 
When lo, a sail ! Now surely help was 
nigh ; 
The red cross flames aloft, Christ's pledge ; 
but no, 
Her black guns grinning hate, she rushes 

And hails us : — " Gains the leak ! Ay, so 
we thought ! 
Sink, then, with curses fraught ! " 

I leaned against my gun still angry-hot, 
And my lids tingled with the tears held 
back : 
This scorn methought was crueller than 
shot: 
The manly death-grip in the battle- 
wrack, 
Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly 
far 
Than such fear-smothered war. 

There our foe wallowed, like a wounded 
brute 
The fiercer for his hurt. What now 
were best ? 
Once more tug bravely at the peril's root, 
Though death came with it ? Or evade 
the test 
If right or wrong in this God's world of 
ours 
Be leagued with mightier powers ? 



34Q 



POEMS OF THE WAR 



Some, faintly loyal, felt their pulses lag 
With the slow beat that doubts and then 
despairs; 
Some, caitiff, would have struck the starry 
flag 
That knits us with our past, and makes 
us heirs 
Of deeds high-hearted as were ever done 
'Neath the all-seeing sun. 

But there was one, the Singer of our crew, 
Upon whose head Age waved his peace- 
ful sign, 
But whose red heart's-blood no surrender 
knew; 
And couchant under brows of massive 
line, 
The eyes, like guns beneath a parapet, 

Watched, charged with lightnings yet. 

The voices of the hills did his obey; 

The torrents flashed and tumbled in his 
song; 
He brought our native fields from far 
away, 
Or set us 'mid the innumerable throng 
Of dateless woods, or where we heard the 
calm 
Old homestead's evening psalm. 

But now he sang of faith to things unseen, 
Of freedom's birthright given to us in 
trust; 
And words of doughty cheer he spoke be- 
tween, 
That made all earthly fortune seem as 
dust, 
Matched with that duty, old as Time and 
new, 
Of being brave and true. 

We, listening, learned what makes the 
might of words, — 
Manhood to back them, constant as a 
star; 
His voice rammed home our cannon, edged 
our swords, 
And sent our boarders shouting; shroud 
and spar 
Heard him and stiffened; the sails heard, 
and wooed 
The winds with loftier mood. 

In our dark hours he manned our guns 
again; 



Remanned ourselves from his own man- 
hood's stores; 
Pride, honor, country, throbbed through 
all his strain; 
And shall we praise ? God's praise was 
his before; 
And on our futile laurels he looks down, 
Himself our bravest crown. 



ODE RECITED AT THE HAR- 
VARD COMMEMORATION 

JULY 21, 1865 

Of none of his poems did Lowell himself 
write more critically, and into none, perhaps, 
did he pour so much fervor in the composition. 
In a playful letter to Miss Norton, written in 
somewhat of a reaction four days after the de- 
livery of the poem, he wrote : " Was I not so 
rapt with the fervor of conception as I have 
not been these ten years, losing 1 my sleep, my 
appetite and my flesh, those attributes to which 
I before alluded as nobly uniting us in a com- 
mon nature with our kind ? Did I not for two 
days exasperate everybody that came near me 
by reciting passages in order to try them on ? 
Did I not even fall backward and downward to 
the old folly of hopeful youth, and think I had 
written something really good at last ? And 
am I not now enduring those retributive dumps 
which ever follow such sinful exultations, the 
Erynnyes of Vanity ? . . . Like a boy, I mis- 
took my excitement for inspiration, and here I 
am in the mud. You see I am a little disap- 
pointed and a little few (un petit peu) vexed. 
I did not make the hit I expected, and am 
ashamed at having been again tempted into 
thinking I could write poetry, a delusion from 
which I have been tolerably free these dozen 
years." The next day in a postscript he added : 
" I have not got cool yet (I mean as to nerves), 
and lie awake at night thinking how much 
better my verses might have been, only I can't 
make 'em so." Twenty years later in recall- 
ing the circumstances of composition he wrote 
to Mr. Gilder : " The passage about Lincoln 
was not in the ode as originally recited, but 
added immediately after. . . . The ode itself 
was an improvisation. Two days before the 
Commemoration I had told my friend [F. J.] 
Child that it was impossible — that I was dull 
as a door-mat. But the next day something 
gave me a jog and the whole thing came out 
of me with a rush. I sat up all night writing 
it out clear, and took it on the morning of the 
day to Child. ' I have something, but don't 
yet know what it is, or whether it will do. 



ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION 341 



Look at it and tell me.' He went a little way 
apart with it under an elm-tree in the College 
Yard. He read a passage here and there, 
brought it back to me and said : ' Do ? I 
should think so ! Don't you be scared.' And 
I was n't, but virtue enough had gone out of me 
to make me weak for a fortnight after. I was 
amazed at the praises I got. Trevelyan told 
me afterwards that he never could have carried 
through the abolition of purchase in the Brit- 
ish Army but for the re-enforcement he got 
from that poem." 

A few months after the delivery of the Ode 
the proposal to reprint it in Harvard Memorial 
Biographies led to a correspondence with the 
editor, Col. T. W. Higginson, in which some 
emendations and additions were proposed. 
" Your criticism," Lowell writes, " is perfectly 
just, and I am much obliged to you for it — 
though I might defend myself, I believe, by 
some constructions even looser in some of the 
Greek choruses. But, on the whole, where I 
have my choice I prefer to make sense. The 
fact is that the Ode was written at a heat 
— such a one, indeed, as leaves one colder 
than common afterwards — and I have hardly 
looked at it since. There is a horrible truth 
in the litera scripta manet, and the confounded 
things make mouths at us when we try to 
alter, but I think this may do : — 

' Ere yet the sharp, decisive word 
Redden the cannon's lips, and while the sword.' 
(Stanza v.) 

On looking farther, I find to my intense dis- 
gust a verse without a mate in the last stanza 
but one, and I must put in a patch. H I had 
only kept my manuscript ! We must read 

' And bid her navies, that so lately hurled 
Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in,' 

or else the poor ' world ' just below will have 
no law of gravitation to hold itself up by. I 
know I had something better originally, but I 
can't get it back. Item, in the eighth please 
make this change : — 

' Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave, 
But through those constellations go 
That shed celestial influence on the brave. 
If life were but to draw this dusty breath 
That doth our wits enslave, 
And with the crowd to hurry to and fro, 
Seeking we know not what, and finding death, 
These did unwisely ; but if living be, 
As some are born to know, 
The power to ennoble, and inspire 
In other souls our brave desire 
For fruit, not leaves, of Time's immortal tree, 
These truly live, our thought's essential fire, 
And to the saner,' etc. 

There ! I won't open the book again, or I 
shall write you another ode instead of mending 
this. But in this latter passage the metre 
wanted limbering a little — it was built too 



much with blank- verse bricks — and I think I 
have bettered it, at least to the ear." The 
second only of these emendations was incorpo- 
rated in the ode at some later date. 

In writing some time afterward to J. B. 
Thayer, who had been raising some questions 
regarding the structure of the Ode, Lowell 
again recurred to the manner in which he had 
been possessed by the poem. " I am not 
sure," he writes, " if I understand what you 
say about the tenth strophe. You will observe 
that it leads naturally to the eleventh, and 
that I there justify a certain narrowness in it 
as an expression of the popular feeling as well 
as my own. I confess I have never got over 
the feeling of wrath with which (just after 
the death of my nephew Willie) I read in an 
English paper that nothing was to be hoped of 
an army officered by tailors' apprentices and 
butcher-boys. The poem was written with a 
vehement speed, which I thought I had lost in 
the skirts of my professor's gown. Till within 
two days of the celebration I was hopelessly 
dumb, and then it all came with a rush, liter- 
ally making me lean (mi fece magro) and so 
nervous that I was weeks in getting over it. 
I was longer in getting the new (eleventh) 
strophe to my mind than in writing the rest of 
the poem. In that I hardly changed a word, 
and it was so undeliberate that I did not find 
out till after it was printed that some of the 
verses lacked corresponding rhymes. ... I 
doubt you are right in wishing itjno re histo ri- 
cal. But then 1 could not have written it. I 
had put the ethical and political view so often 
in prose that I was weary of it. The motives 
of the war ? I had impatiently argued them 
again and again — but for an ode they must 
be in the blood and not the memory. One of 
my great defects (I have always been conscious 
of it) is an impatience of mind which makes 
me contemptuously indifferent about arguing 
matters that have once become convictions." 

Once more, in 1877, in writing to the same 
correspondent, he quotes a passage from a 
paper in the Cornhill : "Mr. Lowell's Com-\ 
memoration Ode is a specimen of the formless I 
poem of unequal lines and broken stanzas sup- / 
posed to be in the manner of Pindar, but truly I 
the descendant of our royalist poet's [Cowley] I 
' majestick numbers.' " In animadversion on 
this Lowell goes on : " Whatever my other 
shortcomings (and they are plenty, as none 
knows better than I), want of reflection is not 
one of them. The poems [this and Lowell's 
other odes] were all intended for public reci- 
tation. That was the first thing to be consid- 
ered. I suppose my ear (from long and pain- 
ful practice on * B K poems) has more tech- 
nical experience in this than almost any. The 
least tedious measure is the rhymed heroic, 



342 



POEMS OF THE WAR 



but this, too, palls unless relieved by passages 
of wit or even mere fun. A long series of uni- 
form stanzas (I am always speaking of public 
recitation) with regularly recurring rhymes 
produces somnolence among the men and a 
desperate resort to their fans on the part of 
the women. No method has yet been invented 
by which the train of thought or feeling can 
be shunted off from the epical to the lyrical 
track. My ears have been jolted often enough 
over the sleepers on such occasions to know 
that. I know something (of course an Amer- 
ican can't know much) about Pindar. But 
his odes had the advantage of being chanted. 
Now, my problem was to contrive a measure 
which should not be tedious by uniformity, 
which should vary with varying moods, in 
which the transitions (including those of the 
voice) should be managed without jar. I at 
first thought of mixed rhymed and blank 
verses of unequal measures, like those in the 
choruses of Samson Agonistes, which are in the 
main masterly. Of course Milton deliberately 
departed from that stricter form of the Greek 
Chorus to which it was bound quite as much 
(I suspect) by the law of its musical accom- 
paniment as by any sense of symmetry. I 
wrote some stanzas of the Commemoration Ode 
on this theory at first, leaving some verses 
without a rhyme to match. But my ear was 
better pleased when the rhyme, coming at a 
longer interval, as a far-off echo rather than 
instant reverberation, produced the same effect 
almost, and yet was grateful by unexpectedly 
recalling an association and faint reminiscence 
of consonance." 

I 

Weak-winged is song, 
Nor aims at that clear-ethered height 
Whither the brave deed climbs for light: 

We seem to do them wrong, 
Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their 

hearse 
Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler 

verse. 
Our trivial song to honor those who come 
With ears attuned to strenuous trump and 

drum, 
And shaped in squadron-strophes their de- 
sire, 
Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and 

fire: 
Yet sometimes feathered words are 

strong, 
A gracious memory to buoy up and save 
From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common 

grave 
Of the unventurous throng. 



To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes 
back 
Her wisest Scholars, those who under- 
stood 
The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, 
And offered their fresh lives to make it 
good: 

No lore of Greece or Rome, 
No science peddling with the names of 

things, 
Or reading stars to find inglorious fates, 

Can lift our life with wings 
Far from Death's idle gulf that for the 
many waits, 

And lengthen out our dates 
With that clear fame whose memory sings 
In manly hearts to come, and nerves them 

and dilates: 
Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all ! 
Not such the trumpet-call 
Of thy diviner mood, 
That could thy sons entice 
From happy homes and toils, the fruitful 

nest 
Of those half-virtues which the world calls 
best, 

Into War's tumult rude; 
But rather far that stern device 
The sponsors chose that round thy cradle 
stood 
In the dim, unventured wood, 
The Veritas that lurks beneath 
The letter's unprolific sheath, 
Life of whate'er makes life worth living, 
Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, 
One heavenly thing whereof earth hath 
the giving. 



Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best 
oil 
Amid the dust of books to find her, 
Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, 
With the cast mantle she hath left be- 
hind her. 
Many in sad faith sought for her, 
Many with crossed hands sighed for 

her; 
But these, our brothers, fought for 

her, 
At life's dear peril wrought for her, 
So loved her that they died for her, 
Tasting the raptured fleetness 



ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION 343 



Of her divine completeness : 
Their higher instinct knew 
Those love her best who to themselves are 

true, 
And what they dare to dream of, dare to 
do; 
They followed her and found her 
Where all may hope to find, 
Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind, 
But beautiful, with danger's sweetness 
round her. 
Where faith made whole with deed 
Breathes its awakening breath 
Into the lifeless creed, 
They saw her plumed and mailed, 
With sweet, stern face unveiled, 
And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them 
in death. 



Our slender life runs rippling by, and 
glides 
Into the silent hollow of the past; 

What is there that abides 
To make the next age better for the last ? 

Is earth too poor to give us 
Something to live for here that shall 
outlive us ? 
Some more substantial boon 
Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's 
fickle moon ? 
The little that we see 
From doubt is never free ; 
The little that we do 
Is but half-nobly true; 
With our laborious hiving 
What men call treasure, and the gods call 
lross, 
Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, 
Only secure in every one's conniving, 
A long account of nothings paid with loss, 
Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen 
vires, 
After our little hour of strut and rave, 
With all our pasteboard passions and de- 
sires, 
Loves, hfe.tes, ambitions, and immortal fires, 
Are tossed pell-mell together in the 

grave. 
But stay t no age was e'er degenerate, 
Unless men held it at too cheap a rate, 
For in our .'ikeness still we shape our 
v fate. 

Ah, there is something here 
Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, 



Something that gives our feeble light 
A high immunity from Night, 
Something that leaps life's narrow bars 
To claim its birthright with the hosts of 
heaven; 
A seed of sunshine that can leaven 
Our earthly dullness with the beams of 
stars, 

And glorify our clay 
With light from fountains elder than the 
Day; 
A conscience more divine than we, 
A gladness fed with secret tears, 
A vexing, forward-reaching sense 
Of some more noble permanence; 
A light across the sea, 
Which haunts the soul and will not let it be, 
Still beaconing from the heights of unde- 
generate years. 



Whither leads the path 
To ampler fates that leads ? 
Not down through flowery meads, 
To reap an aftermath 
Of youth's vainglorious weeds, 
But up the steep, amid the wrath 
And shock of deadly-hostile creeds, 
Where the world's best hope and stay 
By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, 
And every turf the fierce foot clings to 
bleeds. 
Peace hath her not ignoble wreath, 
Ere yet the sharp, decisive word 
Light the black lips of cannon, and the 
sword 
Dreams in its easeful sheath; 
But some day the live coal behind the 
thought, 
Whether from Baal's stone obscene, 
Or from the shrine serene 
Of God's pure altar brought, 
bursts up in flame ; the war of tongue and 

pen 
Learns with what deadly purpose it was 

fraught, 
And, helpless in the fiery passion caught, 
Shakes all the pillared state with shock of 

men: 
Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed 
Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, 
And cries reproachful: "Was it, then, my 

praise, 
And not myself was loved ? Prove now 
thy truth; 



344 



POEMS OF THE WAR 



I claim of thee the promise of thy youth; 
Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase, 
The victim of thy genius, not its mate ! " 
Life may be given in many ways, 
And loyalty to Truth be sealed 
As bravely in the closet as the field, 
H$o bountiful is Fate; 
But then to stand beside her, 
When craven churls deride her, 
To front a lie in arms and not to yield, 
This shows, methinks, God's plan 
And measure of a stalwart man, 
Limbed like the old heroic breeds, 
Who stands self-poised on manhood's 
solid earth, 
Not forced to frame excuses for his 
birth, 
Fed from within with all the strength he 
needs. 



•'Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 

Whom late the Nation he had led, 
With ashes on her head, 
Wept with the passion of an angry grief: 
Forgive me, if from present things I turn 
To speak what in my heart will beat and 

burn, 
And hang my wreath on his world-honored 
urn. 
Nature, they say, doth dote, 
And cannot make a man 
Save on some worn-out plan, 
Repeating us by rote: 
For him her Old-World moulds aside she 
threw, 
And, choosing sweet clay from the 

breast 
Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and 
true. 
How beautiful to see 
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, 
Who loved his charge, but never loved to 

lead; 
One whose meek flock the people joyed to 
be, 
Not lured by any cheat of birth, 
But by his clear-grained human worth, 
And brave old wisdom of sincerity! 

They knew that outward grace is dust; 
They could not choose but trust 
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 
And supple-tempered will 



That bent like perfect steel to spring again 
and thrust. 
His was no lonely mountain-peak of 

mind, 
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy 

bars, 
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors 

blind; 
Broad prairie rather, genial, level- 
lined, 
Fruitful and friendly for all human 
kind, 
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of lofti- 
est stars. 

Nothing of Europe here, 
Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward 
still, 
Ere any names of Serf and Peer 
Could Nature's equal scheme deface 
And thwart her genial will ; 
Here was a type of the true elder race, 
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us 
face to face. 
I praise him not; it were too late; 
And some innative weakness there must be 
In him who condescends to victory 
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, 
Safe in himself as in a fa I 
So always firmly he : ' 
He knew to bide his time, 
And can his fame abide, 
Still patient in his simple fa ; i sublime. 
Till the wise years decide. 
Great captains, with their guns and 
drums, 
Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
But at last silence eomes; 
These all are gone, and> standin£""like a 

tower, 
Our children shall behold his fan e. 
/The kindly-earnest, brave, foieseeing 
'tf man, 

Sagacious, patient, dreading prase, not 
blame, ^. 

New birth of our new soil, the fir it Amer- 
ican. 



Long as man's hope insatiate can discern 
Or only guess some more inspiring 

goal 
Outside of Self, enduriig as the pole, 
Along whose course th€ urn 

Of spirits bravely-pitclied, earth's man- \ n 
lier brood; 



ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION 345 



Long as below we cannot find 
The meed that stills the inexorable mind; 
So long this faith to some ideal Good, 
Under whatever mortal names it masks, 
Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal 
mood 
That thanks the Fates for their severer 
tasks, 
Feeling its challenged pulses leap, 
While others skulk in subterfuges cheap, 
And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon 
it asks, 
Shall win man's praise and woman's love, 
Shall be a wisdom that we set above 
All other skills and gifts to culture dear, 
A virtue round whose forehead we in- 

wreathe 
Laurels that with a living passion breathe 
When other crowns grow, while we twine 
them, sear. 
What brings us thronging these high 
rites to pay, 
And seal these hours the noblest of our year, 
Save that our brothers found this better 
way? 

VIII 

l/We sit here in the Promised Land 
That flows with Freedom's honey and 

milk; 
But 't was they won it, sword in hand, 
Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk. 
We welcome back our bravest and our 

best; — 
Ah me! not all! some come not with the 
rest, 
Who went forth brave and bright as any 

here! 
I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, 
But the sad strings complain, 
And will not please the ear: 
I sweep them for a psean, but they wane 

Again and yet again 
Into a dirge, and die away, in pain. 
In these brave ranks I only see the gaps, 
Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb 

turf wraps, 
Dark to the triumph which they died to 
gain: 
Fitlier may others greet the living, 
For me the past is unforgiving; 
I with uncovered head 
Salute the sacred dead, 
Who went, and who return not. — Say not 



'T is not the grapes of Canaan that repay, 

But the high faith that failed not by the 
way; 

Virtue treads paths that end not in the 
grave ; 

No bar of endless night exiles the brave; 
And to the saner mind 

We rather seem the dead that stayed be- 
hind. 

Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! 

For never shall their aureoled presence lack: 

I see them muster in a gleaming row, 

With ever-youthful brows that nobler show; 

We find in our dull road their shining 
track; 

In every nobler mood 

We feel the orient of their spirit glow, 

Part of our life's unalterable good, 

Of all our saintlier aspiration ; 

They come transfigured back, 

Secure from change in their high-hearted 
ways, 

Beautiful evermore, and with the rays 

Of morn on their white Shields of Expecta- 
tion! 



But is there hope to save 
Even this ethereal essence from the 

grave ? 
What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle 
wrong 
Save a few clarion names, or golden threads 
of song ? 

Before my musing eye 
**^The mighty ones of old sweep by, 
Disvoiced now and insubstantial things, 
As noisy once as we ; poor ghosts of kings, 
Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust, 
And many races, nameless long ago, 
To darkness driven by that imperious 

gust 
Of ever-rushing Time that here doth 

blow: 
O visionary world, condition strange, 
Where naught abiding is but only Change, 
Where the deep-bolted stars themselves 
still shift and range! 
Shall we to more continuance make pre- 
tence ? 
Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit; 

And, bit by bit, 
The cunning years steal all from us but woe ; 
Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest 
sow. 



34^ 



POEMS OF THE WAR 



But, when we vanish hence, 
Shall they lie forceless in the dark below, 
Save to make green their little length of 

sods, 
Or deepen pansies for a year or two, 
Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods? 
Was dying all they had the skill to do? 
That were not fruitless : but the Soul 

resents 
Such short-lived service, as if blind events 
Euled without her, or earth could so 

endure; 
She claims a more divine investiture 
Of longer tenure than Fame's airy rents ; 
Whate'er she touches doth her nature 

share ; 
Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air, 

Gives eyes to mountains blind, 
Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the 

wind, 
And her clear trump sings succor every- 
where 
By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind; 
For soul inherits all that soul could dare : 
Yea, Manhood hath a wider span 
And larger privilege of life than man. 
The single deed, the private sacrifice, 
So radiant now through proudly-hidden 

tears, 
Is covered up erelong from mortal eyes 
With thoughtless drift of the deciduous 

years; 
But that high privilege that makes all 

men peers, 
That leap of heart whereby a people rise 
Up to a noble anger's height, 
And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, 
but grow more bright, 
That swift validity in noble veins, 
Of choosing danger and disdaining 
shame, 

Of being set on flame 
By the pure fire that flies all contact base 
But wraps its chosen with angelic might, 
These are imperishable gains, 
Sure as the sun, medicinal as light, 
These hold great futures in their lusty 
reins 
And certify to earth a new imperial race. 



Who now shall sneer? 
Who dare again to say we trace 
Our lines to a plebeian race? 

Roundhead and Cavalier! 



Dumb are those names erewhile in battle 

loud; 
Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud, 
./ They flit across the ear: 
^That is best blood that hath most iron 

in 't. 
To edge resolve with, pouring without stint 
For what makes manhood dear. 
Tell us not of Plantagenets, 
Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods 

crawl 
Down from some victor in a border-brawl! 

How poor their outworn coronets, 
Matched with one leaf of that plain civic 

wreath 
Our brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath, 
Through whose desert a rescued Nation 
sets 
Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears 
Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears 
With vain resentments and more vain 
regrets! 



Not in anger, not in pride, 
Pure from passion's mixture rude 
Ever to base earth allied, 
But with far-heard gratitude, 
Still with heart and voice renewed, 

To heroes living and dear martyrs dead, 
The strain should close that consecrates our 
brave. 

Lift the heart and lift the head ! 
Lofty be its mood and grave, 
Not without a martial ring, 
Not without a prouder tread 
And a peal of exultation : 
Little right has he to sing 
Through whose heart in such an hour 
Beats no march of conscious power, 
Sweeps no tumult of elation ! 
'T is no Man we celebrate, 
By his country's victories great, 

A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, 
But the pith and marrow of a Nation 
Drawing force from all her men, 
Highest, humblest, weakest, all, 
For her time of need, and then 
Pulsing it again through them, 

Till the basest can no longer cower, 

Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, 

Touched but in passing by her mantle- 
hem. 

Come back, then, noble pride, for 't is 
her dower ! 



TO THE MUSE 



347 



How could poet ever tower, 
If his passions, hopes, and fears, 
If his triumphs and his tears, 
Kept not measure with his people ? 
Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and 

waves ! 
Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking 

steeple ! 
Banners, adance with triumph, bend your 
staves ! 
And from every mountain-peak 
Let beacon-fire to answering beacon 

speak, 
Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface 
he, 
And so leap on in light from sea to sea, 
Till the glad news be sent 
Across a kindling continent, 
Making earth feel more firm and air breathe 

braver : 
" Be proud ! for she is saved, and all have 
helped to save her ! 
She that lifts up the manhood of the 

poor, 
She of the open soul and open door, 
With room about her hearth for all 

mankind ! 
The fire is dreadful in her eyes no 

more ; 
From her bold front the helm she doth 

unbind, 
Sends all her handmaid armies back to 

spin, 
And bids her navies, that so lately 

hurled 
Their crashing battle, hold their thun- 
ders in, 
Swimming like birds of calm along the 
unharmful shore. 



No challenge sends she to the elder 
world, 

That looked askance and hated ; a light 
scorn 

Plays o'er her mouth, as round her 
mighty knees 

She calls her children back, and waits 
the morn 
Of nobler day, enthroned between her sub- 
ject seas." 



Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found 
release ! 
Thy God, in these distempered days, 
Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of 
His ways, 
And through thine enemies hath wrought 
j thy peace ! 

Bow down in prayer and praise! 
No poorest in thy borders but may now 
Lift to the juster skies a man's enfran- 
chised brow. 
O Beautiful ! my Country ! ours once 

more ! 
Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair 
O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, 
And letting thy set lips, 
Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, 
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, 
What words divine of lover or of poet 
Could tell our love and make thee know it, 
Among the Nations bright beyond com- 
pare ? 
What were our lives without thee ? 
What all our lives to save thee ? 
We reck not what we gave thee; 
We will not dare to doubt thee, 
But ask whatever else, and we will dare ! 



L'ENVOI 



TO THE MUSE 

Whither ? Albeit I follow fast, 

In all life's circuit I but find, 
Not where thou art, but where thou wast, 

Sweet beckoner, more fleet than wind ! 
I haunt the pine-dark solitudes, 

With soft brown silence carpeted, 
And plot to snare thee in the woods : 

Peace I o'ertake, but thou art fled! 



I find the rock where thou didst rest, 
The moss thy skimming foot hath prest; 

All Nature with thy parting thrills, 
Like branches after birds new-flown; 

Thy passage hill and hollow fills 
With hints of virtue not their own; 
In dimples still the water slips 
Where thou hast dipt thy finger-tips; 

Just, just beyond, forever burn 

Gleams of a grace without return; 



348 



L'ENVOI 



Upon thy shade I plant my foot, 
And through my frame strange raptures 

shoot; 
All of thee but thyself I grasp; 

I seem to fold thy luring shape, 
And vague air to my bosom clasp, 

Thou lithe, perpetual Escape ! 

One mask and then another drops, 
And thou art secret as before: 

Sometimes with flooded ear I list, 

And hear thee, wondrous organist, 
From mighty continental stops 
A thunder of new music pour ; 
Through pipes of earth and air and stone 
Thy inspiration deep is blown; 
Through mountains, forests, open downs, 
Lakes, railroads, prairies, states, and towns, 
Thy gathering fugue goes rolling on 
From Maine to utmost Oregon; 
The factory-wheels in cadence hum, 
From brawling parties concords come; 
All this I hear, or seem to hear, 
But when, enchanted, I draw near 
To mate with words the various theme, 
Life seems a whiff of kitchen steam, 
History an organ-grinder's thrum, 

For thou hast slipt from it and me 
And all thine organ-pipes left dumb, 

Most mutable Perversity ! 

Not weary yet, I still must seek, 
And hope for luck next day, next week; 
I go to see the great man ride, 
Shiplike, the swelling human tide 
That floods to bear him into port, 
Trophied from Senate-hall and Court; 
Thy magnetism, I feel it there, 
Thy rhythmic presence fleet and rare, 
Making the Mob a moment fine 
With glimpses of their own Divine, 
As in their demigod they see 

Their cramped ideal soaring free; 
'T was thou didst bear the fire about, 

That, like the springing of a mine, 
Sent up to heaven the street-long shout; 
Full well I know that thou wast here, 
It was thy breath that brushed my ear; 
But vainly in the stress and whirl 
I dive for thee, the moment's pearl. 

Through every shape thou well canst 

run, 
Proteus, 'twixt rise and set of sun, 
Well pleased with logger-camps in Maine 



As where Milan's pale Duomo lies 
A stranded glacier on the plain, 
Its peaks and pinnacles of ice 
Melted in many a quaint device, 
And sees, above the city's din, 
Afar its silent Alpine kin: 
I track thee over carpets deep 
To wealth's and beauty's inmost keep; 
Across the sand of bar-room floors 
Mid the stale reek of boosing boors ; 
Where browse the hay-field's fragrant 

heats, 
Or the flail-heart of Autumn beats; 
I dog thee through the market's throngs 
To where the sea with myriad tongues 
Laps the green edges of the pier, 
And the tall ships that eastward steer, 
Curtsy their farewells to the town, 
O'er the curved distance lessening down ; 
I follow allwhere for thy sake, 
Touch thy robe's hem, but ne'er o'ertake, 
Find where, scarce yet unmoving, lies, 
Warm from thy limbs, thy last disguise; 
But thou another shape hast donned, 
And lurest still just, just beyond ! 

But here a voice, I know not whence, 
Thrills clearly through my inward sense, 
Saying : " See where she sits at home 
While thou in search of Her dost roam ! 
All summer long her ancient wheel 

Whirls humming by the open door, 
Or, when the hickory's social zeal 

Sets the wide chimney in a roar, 
Close-nestled by the tinkling hearth, 
It modulates the household mirth 
With that sweet serious undertone 
Of duty, music all her own; 
Still as of old she sits and spins 
Our hopes, our sorrows, and our sins; 
With equal care she twines the fates 
Of cottages and mighty states; 
She spins the earth, the air, the sea, 
The maiden's unschooled fancy free, 
The boy's first love, the man's first grief, 
The budding and the fall o' the leaf; 
The piping west-wind's snowy care 
For her their cloudy fleeces spare, 
Or from the thorns of evil times 
She can glean wool to twist her rhymes; 
Morning and noon and eve supply 
To her their fairest tints for dye, 
But ever through her twirling thread 
There spires one line of warmest red, 
Tinged from the homestead's genial heart, 



THE CATHEDRAL 



349 



The stamp and warrant of her art; 
With this Time's sickle she outwears, 
And blunts the Sisters' baffled shears. 

" Harass her not : thy heat and stir 
But greater coyness breed in her; 
Yet thou mayst find, ere Age's frost, 
Thy long apprenticeship not lost, 
Learning at last that Stygian Fate 
Unbends to him that knows to wait. 
The Muse is womanish, nor deigns 
Her love to him that pules and plains; 
With proud, averted face she stands 
To him that wooes with empty hands. 
Make thyself free of Manhood's guild ; 
Pull down thy barns and greater build; 



The wood, the mountain, and the plain 
Wave breast-deep with the poet's grain; 
Pluck thou the sunset's fruit of gold, 
Glean from the heavens and ocean old; 
From fireside lone and trampling street 
Let thy life garner daily wheat; 
The epic of a man rehearse, 
Be something better than thy verse; 
Make thyself rich, and then the Muse 
Shall court thy precious interviews, 
Shall take thy head upon her knee, 
And such enchantment lilt to thee, 
That thou shalt hear the life-blood flow 
From farthest stars to grass- blades low, 
And find the Listener's science still 
Transcends the Singer's deepest skill ! " 



THE CATHEDRAL 



MR. JAMES T. FIELDS 
My dear Fields : 

Dr. Johnson's sturdy self-respect led him to invent the Bookseller as a substitute for 
the Patron. My relations with you have enabled me to discover how pleasantly the 
Friend may replace the Bookseller. Let me record my sense of many thoughtful ser- 
vices by associating your name with a poem which owes its appearance in this form to 
your partiality. 

Cordially yours, 

J. R. LOWELL. 
Cambridge, November 29, 1869. 



The Cathedral was printed first in The Atlan- 
tic Monthly for January, 1870, but was shortly 
after published in a volume by itself with 
changes and additions. The poem was wrought 
at apparently with something of the loving 
enthusiasm which we are wont to ascribe to 
the builders of actual cathedrals. It was writ- 
ten in the summer of 1869 and returned to 
frequently before publication. When in the 
midst of the work he wrote to Mr. Howells, 
then editor of the Atlantic, " Up to time indeed ! 
The fear is not about time, but space. You 
won't have room in your menagerie for such a 
displeaseyousaurus. The verses if stretched 
end to end in a continuous line would go clear 
round the cathedral they celebrate, and nobody 
(I fear) the wiser. I can't tell yet what they 
are. There seems a bit of clean carving here 
and there, a solid buttress or two, and perhaps 
a gleam through painted glass — but I have 
not copied it out yet, nor indeed read it over 



consecutively." A little later he wrote to 
Miss Norton : " I hope it is good, for it fairly 
trussed me at last and bore me up as high 
as my poor lungs will bear into the heaven 
of invention. I was happy writing it, and 
so steeped in it that if I had written to you 
it would have been in blank verse. It is a 
kind of religious poem, and is called A Day at 
Chartres. ... I can't tell yet how it will 
stand. Already I am beginning to — to — you 
know what I mean — to taste my champagne 
next morning." 

The poem received some comment from two 
distinguished critics; Mr. Leslie Stephen and 
Mr. Ruskin. To the former Lowell wrote : "I 
am glad you liked The Cathedral and sorry for 
anything in it you did n't like. The name was 
none of my choosing. I called it A Day at 
Chartres, and Fields rechristened it. You see 
with my name the episode of the Britons comes 
in naturally enough (it is historical, by the 



35° 



THE CATHEDRAL 



way). The truth is, I had no notion of being 
satirical, but wrote what I did just as I might 
have said it to you in badinage. But of course 
the tone is lost in print. Anyhow, there is one 
Englishman I am fond enough of to balance 
any spite I might have against others, as you 
know. But I have n't a particle. If I had 
met two of my own countrymen at Chartres I 
should have been quite as free with them." 
In reply to some advice and strictures of Mr. 
Ruskin, he wrote to Mr. Norton : " 1 am glad to 
find that the poem sticks. Those who liked it 
at first like it still, some of them better than 
ever, some extravagantly. At any rate it wrote 
itself ; all of a sudden it was there, and that is 
something in its favor. Now Ruskin wants me 
to go over it with a file. That is just what I 
did. I wrote in pencil, then copied it out in 



ink, and worked over it as I never worked over 
anything before. I may fairly say there is not 
a word in it over which I have not thought, 
not an objection which I did not foresee and 
maturely consider. Well, in my second copy 
I made many changes, as I thought for the 
better, and then put it away in my desk to 
cool for three weeks or so. When I came to 
print it, I put back, I believe, every one of the 
original readings which I had changed. Those 
which had come to me were far better than 
those I had come at. Only one change I made 
(for the worse), in order to escape a rhyme 
that had crept in without my catching it." 
Ruskin made some verbal criticism, which 
Lowell proceeded to examine, and the reader 
will find the discussion in the notes at the end 
of this volume. 



Far through the memory shines a happy 

day, 
Cloudless of care, down-shod to every 

sense, 
And simply perfect from its own resource, 
As to a bee the new campanula's 
Illuminate seclusion swung in air. 
Such days are not the prey of setting suns, 
Nor ever blurred with mist of after- 
thought; 
Like words made magical by poets dead, 
Wherein the music of all meaning is 
The sense hath garnered or the soul 

divined, 
They mingle with our life's ethereal part, 
Sweetening and gathering sweetness ever- 
more, 
By beauty's franchise disenthralled of time. 

I can recall, nay, they are present still, 
Parts of myself, the perfume of my mind, 
Days that seem farther off than Homer's 

now 
Ere yet the child had loudened to the boy, 
And I, recluse from playmates, found per- 
force 
Companionship in things that not denied 
Nor granted wholly; as is Nature's wont, 
Who, safe in uncontaminate reserve, 
Lets us mistake our longing for her love, 
And mocks with various echo of ourselves. 

These first sweet frauds upon our con- 
sciousness, 

That blend the sensual with its imaged 
world, 

These virginal cognitions, gifts of morn, 



Ere life grow noisy, and slower-footed 

thought 
Can overtake the rapture of the sense, 
To thrust between ourselves and what we 

feel, 
Have something in them secretly divine. 
Vainly the eye, once schooled to serve the 

brain, 
With pains deliberate studies to renew 
The ideal vision : second-thoughts are 

prose ; 
For beauty's acme hath a term as brief 
As the wave's poise before it break in 

pearl. 
Our own breath dims the mirror of the 

sense, 
Looking too long and closely : at a flash 
We snatch the essential grace of meaning 

out, 
And that first passion beggars all behind, 
Heirs of a tamer transport prepossessed. 
Who, seeing once, has truly seen again 
The gray vague of unsympathizing sea 
That dragged his Fancy from her moor- 
ings back 
To shores inhospitable of eldest time, 
Till blank foreboding of earth-gendered 

powers, 
Pitiless seignories in the elements, 
Omnipotences blind that darkling smite, 
Misgave him, and repaganized the world? 
Yet, by some subtler touch of sympathy, 
These primal apprehensions, dimly stirred, 
Perplex the eye with pictures from within. 
This hath made poets dream of lives fore- 
gone 
In worlds fantastical, more fair than ours; 



THE CATHEDRAL 



35i 



So Memory cheats us, glimpsing half- 
revealed. 
Even as I write she tries her wonted spell 
In that continuous redbreast boding rain: 
The bird I hear sings not from yonder elm; 
But the flown ecstasy my childhood heard 
Is vocal in my mind, renewed by him, 
Haply made sweeter by the accumulate 

thrill 
That threads my undivided life and steals 
A pathos from the years and graves be- 
tween. 

I know not how it is with other men, 
Whom I but guess, deciphering myself; 
For me, once felt is so felt nevermore. 
The fleeting relish at sensation's brim 
Had in it the best ferment of the wine. 
One spring I knew as never any since: 
All night the surges of the warm southwest 
Boomed intermittent through the wallowing 

elms, 
And brought a morning from the Gulf 

adrift, 
Omnipotent with sunshine, whose quick 

charm 
Startled with crocuses the sullen turf 
And wiled the bluebird to his whiff of song: 
One summer hour abides, what time I 

perched, 
Dappled with noonday, under simmering 

leaves, 
And pulled the pulpy oxhearts, while aloof 
An oriole clattered and the robins shrilled, 
Denouncing me an alien and a thief: 
One morn of autumn lords it o'er the rest, 
When in the lane I watched the ash-leaves 

fall, 
Balancing softly earthward without wind, 
Or twirling with directer impulse down 
On those fallen yesterday, now barbed with 

frost, 
While I grew pensive with the pensive year: 
And once I learned how marvellous winter 

was, 
When past the fence-rails, downy-gray with 

rime, 
I creaked adventurous o'er the spangled 

crust 
That made familiar fields seem far and 

strange 
As those stark wastes that whiten endlessly 
In ghastly solitude about the pole, 
And gleam relentless to the unsetting sun: 
Instant the candid chambers of my brain 



Were painted with these sovran images ; 
And later visions seem but copies pale 
From those unfading frescos of the past, 
Which I, young savage, in my age of flint, 
Gazed at, and dimly felt a power in me 
Parted from Nature by the joy in her 
That doubtfully revealed me to myself. 
Thenceforward I must stand outside the 

gate; 
And paradise was paradise the more, 
Known once and barred against satiety. 

What we call Nature, all outside ourselves, 
Is but our own conceit of what we see, 
Our own reaction upon what we feel; 
The world's a woman to our shifting mood, 
Feeling with us, or making due pretence; 
And therefore we the more persuade our- 
selves 
To make all things our thought's confeder- 
ates, 
Conniving with us in whate'er we dream. 
So when our Fancy seeks analogies, 
Though she have hidden what she after 

finds, 
She loves to cheat herself with feigned sur- 
prise. 
I find my own complexion everywhere : 
No rose, I doubt, was ever, like the first, 
A marvel to the bush it dawned upon, 
The rapture of its life made visible, 
The mystery of its yearning realized, 
As the first babe to the first woman born; 
No falcon ever felt delight of wings 
As when, an eyas, from the stolid cliff 
Loosing himself, he followed his high heart 
To swim on sunshine, masterless as wind; 
And I believe the brown earth takes delight 
In the new snowdrop looking back at her, 
To think that by some vernal alchemy 
It could transmute her darkness into pearl; 
What is the buxom peony after that, 
With its coarse constancy of hoyden blush? 
What the full summer to that wonder new? 

But, if in nothing else, in us there is 
A sense fastidious hardly reconciled 
To the poor makeshifts of life's scenery, 
Where the same slide must double all its 

parts, 
Shoved in for Tarsus and hitched back for 

Tyre. 
I blame not in the soul this daintiness, 
Rasher of surfeit than a humming-bird, 
In things indifferent by sense purveyed; 



35 2 



THE CATHEDRAL 



It argues her an immortality 

And dateless incomes of experience, 

This unthrift housekeeping that will not 

brook 
A dish warmed-over at the feast of life, 
And finds Twice stale, served with what- 
ever sauce. 
Nor matters much how it may go with me 
Who dwell in Grub Street and am proud to 

drudge 
Where men, my betters, wet their crust 

with tears: 
Use can make sweet the peach's shady side, 
That only by reflection tastes of sun. 

But she, my Princess, who will sometimes 

deign 
My garret to illumine till the walls, 
Narrow and dingy, scrawled with hack- 
neyed thought 
(Poor Richard slowly elbowing Plato out), 
Dilate and drape themselves with tapestries 
Nausikaa might have stooped o'er, while, 

between, 
Mirrors, effaced in their own clearness, send 
Her only image on through deepening 



With endless repercussion of delight, — 
Bringer of life, witching each sense to soul, 
That sometimes almost gives me to believe 
I might have been a poet, gives at least 
A brain desaxonized, an ear that makes 
Music where none is, and a keener pang 
Of exquisite surmise outleaping thought, — 
Her will I pamper in her luxury: 
No crumpled rose-leaf of too careless choice 
Shall bring a northern nightmare to her 

dreams, 
Vexing with sense of exile; hers shall be 
The invitiate firstlings of experience, 
Vibrations felt but once and felt life long: 
Oh, more than half-way turn that Grecian 

front 
Upon me, while with self-rebuke I spell, 
On the plain fillet that confines thy hair 
In conscious bounds of seeming uncon- 

straint, 
The Naught in overplus, thy race's badge! 

One feast for her I secretly designed 
In that Old World so strangely beautiful 
To us the disinherited of eld, — 
A day at Chartres, with no soul beside 
To roil with pedant prate my joy serene 
And make the minster shy of confidence. 



I went, and, with the Saxon's pious care, 
First ordered dinner at the pea-green inn, 
The flies and I it£ only customers. 
Eluding these, I loitered through the town, 
With hope to take my minster unawares 
In its grave solitude of memory. 
A pretty burgh, and such as Fancy loves 
For bygone grandeurs, faintly Tumorous 

now 
Upon the mind's horizon, as of storm 
Brooding its dreamy thunders far aloof, 
That mingle with our mood, but not dis- 
turb. 
Its once grim bulwarks, tamed to lovers' 

walks, 
Look down unwatchf ul on the sliding Eure, 
Whose listless leisure suits the quiet place, 
Lisping among his shallows homelike sounds 
At Concord and by Bankside heard before. 
Chance led me to a public pleasure-ground, 
Where I grew kindly with the merry groups, 
And blessed the Frenchman for his simple 

art 
Of being domestic in the light of day. 
His language has no word, we growl, for 

Home; 
But he can find a fireside in the sun, 
Play with his child, make love, and shriek 

his mind, 
By throngs of strangers undisprivacied. 
He makes his life a public gallery, 
Nor feels himself till what he feels comes 

back 
In manifold reflection from without; 
While we, each pore alert with conscious- 
ness, 
Hide our best selves as we had stolen them, 
And each bystander a detective were, 
Keen-eyed for every chink of undisguise. 

So, musing o'er the problem which was 

best, — 
A life wide-windowed, shining all abroad, 
Or curtains drawn to shield from sight 

profane 
The rites we pay to the mysterious I, — 
With outward senses furloughed and head 

bowed 
I followed some fine instinct in my feet, 
Till, to unbend me from the loom of 

thought, 
Looking up suddenly, I found mine eyes 
Confronted with the minster's vast repose. 
Silent and gray as forest-leaguered cliff 
Left inland by the ocean's slow retreat, 



THE CATHEDRAL 



353 



That hears afar the breeze-borne rote and 



Remembering shocks of surf that clomb 

and fell, 
Spume-sliding down the baffled decuman, 
It rose before me, patiently remote 
From the great tides of life it breasted once, 
Hearing the noise of men as in a dream. 
I stood before the triple northern port, 
Where dedicated shapes of saints and kings, 
Stern faces bleared with immemorial watch, 
Looked down benignly grave and seemed 

to say, 
Ye come and go incessant; we remain 
Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past; 
Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot, 
Of faith so nobly realized as this. 
I seem to have heard it said by learned 

folk 
Who drench you with aesthetics till you feel 
As if all beauty were a ghastly bore, 
The faucet to let loose a wash of words, 
That Gothic is not Grecian, therefore worse ; 
But, being convinced by much experiment 
How little inventiveness there is in man, 
Grave copier of copies, I give thanks 
For a new relish, careless to inquire 
My pleasure's pedigree, if so it please, 
Nobly, I mean, nor renegade to art. 
The Grecian gluts me with its perfect- 

ness, 
Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained, 
The one thing finished in this hasty world, 
Forever finished, though the barbarous pit, 
Fanatical on hearsay, stamp and shout 
As if a miracle could be encored. 
But ah! this other, this that never ends, 
Still climbing, luring fancy still to climb, 
As full of morals half-divined as life, 
Graceful, grotesque, with ever new surprise 
Of hazardous caprices sure to please, 
Heavy as nightmare, airy-light as fern, 
Imagination's very self in stone! 
With one long sigh of infinite release 
From pedantries past, present, or to come, 
I looked, and owned myself a happy Goth. 
Your blood is mine, ye architects of dream, 
Builders of aspiration incomplete, 
So more consummate, souls self-confident, 
Who felt your own thought worthy of re- 
cord 
In monumental pomp! No Grecian drop 
Rebukes these veins that leap with kindred 

thrill, 
After long exile, to the mother-tongue. 



Ovid in Pontus, puling for his Rome 
Of men invirile and disnatured dames 
That poison sucked from the Attic bloom 

decayed, 
Shrank with a shudder from the blue-eyed 

race 
Whose force rough-handed should renew 

the world, 
And from the dregs of Romulus express 
Such wine as Dante poured, or he who blew 
Roland's vain blast, or sang the Campeador 
In verse that clanks like armor in the 

charge, 
Homeric juice, though brimmed in Odin's 

horn. 
And they could build, if not the columned 

fane 
That from the height gleamed seaward 

many-hue d, 
Something more friendly with their ruder 



The gray spire, molten now in driving mist, 
Now lulled with the incommunicable blue ; 
The carvings touched to meaning new with 

snow, 
Or commented with fleeting grace of shade ; 
The statues, motley as man's memory, 
Partial as that, so mixed of true and false, 
History and legend meeting with a kiss 
Across this bound-mark where their realms 

confine ; 
The painted windows, freaking gloom with 

. s low> 

Dusking the sunshine which they seem to 

cheer, 
Meet symbol of the senses and the soul, 
And the whole pile, grim with the North- 
man's thought 
Of life and death, and doom, life's equal 

fee, — 
These were before me : and I gazed 

abashed, 
Child of an age that lectures, not creates, 
Plastering our swallow-nests on the awful 

Past, 
And twittering round the work of larger 

men, 
As we had builded what we but deface. 
Far up the great bells wallowed in delight, 
Tossing their clangors o'er the heedless 

town, 
To call the worshippers who never came, 
Or women mostly, in loath twos and threes. 
I entered, reverent of whatever shrine 
Guards piety and solace for my kind 



354 



THE CATHEDRAL 



Or gives the soul a moment's truce of God, 
And shared decorous in the ancient rite 
My sterner fathers held idolatrous. 
The service over, I was tranced in thought : 
Solemn the deepening vaults, and most to 

me, 
Fresh from the fragile realm of deal and 

paint, 
Or brick mock-pious with a marble front ; 
Solemn the lift of high-embowered roof, 
The clustered stems that spread in boughs 

disleaved, 
Through which the organ blew a dream of 

storm, 
Though not more potent to sublime with 

awe 
And shut the heart up in tranquillity, 
Than aisles to me familiar that o'erarch 
The conscious silences of brooding woods, 
Centurial shadows, cloisters of the elk : 
Yet here was sense of undefined regret, 
Irreparable loss, uncertain what : 
Was all this grandeur but anachronism, 
A shell divorced of its informing life, 
Where the priest housed him like a hermit- 
crab, 
An alien to that faith of elder days 
That gathered round it this fair shape of 

stone ? 
Is old Religion but a spectre now, 
Haunting the solitude of darkened minds, 
Mocked out of memory by the sceptic day ? 
Is there no corner safe from peeping 

Doubt, 
Since Gutenberg made thought cosmopolite 
And stretched electric threads from mind 

to mind ? 
Nay, did Faith build this wonder ? or did 

Fear, 
That makes a fetish and misnames it God 
(Blockish or metaphysic, matters not), 
Contrive this coop to shut its tyrant in, 
Appeased with playthings, that he might 

not harm ? 

I turned and saw a beldame on her knees ; 
With eyes astray, she told mechanic beads 
Before some shrine of saintly womanhood, 
Bribed intercessor with the far-off Judge : 
Such my first thought, by kindlier soon re- 
buked, 
Pleading for whatsoever touches life 
With upward impulse : be He nowhere 

else, 
God is in all that liberates and lifts, 



In all that humbles, sweetens, and con- 
soles : 
Blessed the natures shored on every side 
With landmarks of hereditary thought ! 
Thrice happy they that wander not life 

long 
Beyond near succor of the household faith, 
The guarded fold that shelters, not con- 
fines ! 
Their steps find patience in familiar paths, 
Printed with hope by loved feet gone be- 
fore 
Of parent, child, or lover, glorified 
By simple magic of dividing Time. 
My lids were moistened as the woman 

knelt, 
And — was it will, or some vibration faint 
Of sacred Nature, deeper than the will ? — 
My heart occultly felt itself in hers, 
Through mutual intercession gently 
leagued. 

Or was it not mere sympathy of brain ? 
A sweetness intellectually conceived 
In simpler creeds to me impossible ? 
A juggle of that pity for ourselves 
In others, which puts on such pretty masks 
And snares self-love with bait of charity ? 
Something of all it might be, or of none : 
Yet for a moment I was snatched away 
And had the evidence of things not seen ; 
For one rapt moment ; then it all came 

back, 
This age that blots out life with question- 
marks, 
This nineteenth century with its knife and 

glass 
That make thought physical, and thrust far 

off 
The Heaven, so neighborly with man of 

old, 
To voids sparse-sown with alienated stars. 

'T is irrecoverable, that ancient faith, 
Homely and wholesome, suited to the 

time, 
With rod or candy for child-minded men : 
No theologic tube, with lens on lens 
Of syllogism transparent, brings it near, — 
At best resolving some new nebula, 
Or blurring some fixed-star of hope to 

mist. 
Science was Faith once ; Faith were Science 

now, 
Would she but lay her bow and arrows by 



THE CATHEDRAL 



355 



And arm her with the weapons of the 

time. 
Nothing that keeps thought out is safe from 

thought. 
For there 's no virgin-fort but self-respect, 
And Truth defensive hath lost hold on 

God. 
Shall we treat Him as if He were a child 
That knew not His own purpose ? nor dare 

trust 
The Kock of Ages to their chemic tests, 
Lest some day the all-sustaining base divine 
Should fail from under us, dissolved in 

gas ? 
The armed eye that with a glance discerns 
In a dry blood-speck between ox and man 
Stares helpless at this miracle called life, 
This shaping potency behind the egg, 
This circulation swift of deity, 
Where suns and systems inconspicuous 

float 
As the poor blood -disks in our mortal 

veins. 
Each age must worship its own thought of 

God, 
More or less earthy, clarifying still 
With subsidence continuous of the dregs ; 
Nor saint nor sage could fix immutably 
The fluent image of the unstable Best, 
Still changing in their very hands that 

wrought : 
To-day's eternal truth To-morrow proved 
Frail as frost-landscapes on a window-pane. 
Meanwhile Thou smiledst, inaccessible, 
At Thought's own substance made a cage 

for Thought, 
And Truth locked fast with her own mas- 
ter-key ; 
Nor didst Thou reck what image man 

might make 
Of his own shadow on the flowing world; 
The climbing instinct was enough for Thee. 
Or wast Thou, then, an ebbing tide that 

left 
Strewn with dead miracle those eldest 

shores, 
For men to dry, and dryly lecture on, 
Thyself thenceforth incapable of flood ? 
Idle who hopes with prophets to be 

snatched 
By virtue in their mantles left below; 
Shall the soul live on other men's report, 
Herself a pleasing fable of herself ? 
Man cannot be God's outlaw if he would, 
Nor so abscond him in the caves of sense 



But Nature still shall search some crevice 

out 
With messages of splendor from that 

Source 
Which, dive he, soar he, baffles still and 

lures. 
This life were brutish did we not some- 
times 
Have intimation clear of wider scope, 
Hints of occasion infinite, to keep 
The soul alert with noble discontent 
And onward yearnings of unstilled desire; 
Fruitless, except we now and then divined 
A mystery of Purpose, gleaming through 
The secular confusions of the world, 
Whose will we darkly accomplish, doing 

ours. 
No man can think nor in himself perceive, 
Sometimes at waking, in the street some- 
times, 
Or on the hillside, always unforewarned, 
A grace of being, finer than himself, 
That beckons and is gone, — a larger life 
Upon his own impinging, with swift 

glimpse 
Of spacious circles luminous with mind, 
To which the ethereal substance of his 

own 
Seems but gross cloud to make that visible, 
Touched to a sudden glory round the edge. 
Who that hath known these visitations fleet 
Would strive to make them trite and 

ritual ? 
I, that still pray at morning and at eve, 
Loving those roots that feed us from the 

past, 
And prizing more than Plato things I 

learned 
At that best academe, a mother's knee, 
Thrice in my life perhaps have truly 

prayed, 
Thrice, stirred below my conscious self, 

have felt 
That perfect disenthralment which is God; 
Nor know I which to hold worst enemy, 
Him who on speculation's windy waste 
Would turn me loose, stript of the raiment 

warm 
By Faith contrived against our nakedness, 
Or him who, cruel-kind, would fain obscure, 
With painted saints and paraphrase of God, 
The soul's east-window of divine surprise. 
Where others worship I but look and long; 
For, though not recreant to my fathers' 

faith, 



356 



THE CATHEDRAL 



Its forms to me are weariness, and most 
That drony vacuum of compulsory prayer, 
Still pumping phrases for the Ineifable, 
Though all the valves of memory gasp and 

wheeze. 
Words that have drawn transcendent mean- 
ings up 
From the best passion of all bygone time, 
Steeped through with tears of triumph and 

remorse, 
Sweet with all sainthood, cleansed in mar- 
tyr-fires, 
Can they, so consecrate and so inspired, 
By repetition wane to vexing wind ? 
Alas ! we cannot draw habitual breath 
In the thin air of life's supremer heights, 
We cannot make each meal a sacrament, 
Nor with our tailors be disbodied souls, — 
We men, too conscious of earth's comedy, 
Who see two sides, with our posed selves 

debate, 
And only for great stakes can be sublime ! 
Let us be thankful when, as I do here, 
We can read Bethel on a pile of stones, 
And, seeing where God has been, trust in 
Him. 

Brave Peter Fischer there in Nuremberg, 
Moulding Saint Sebald's miracles in bronze, 
Put saint and stander-by in that quaint 

garb 
Familiar to him in his daily walk, 
Not doubting God could grant a miracle 
Then and in Nuremberg, if so He would; 
But never artist for three hundred years 
Hath dared the contradiction ludicrous 
Of supernatural in modern clothes. 
Perhaps the deeper faith that is to come 
Will see God rather in the strenuous doubt, 
Than in the creed held as an infant's hand 
Holds purposeless whatso is placed therein. 

Say it is drift, not progress, none the less, 
With the old sextant of the fathers' creed, 
We shape our courses by new-risen stars, 
And, still lip-loyal to what once was truth, 
Smuggle new meanings under ancient 

names, 
Unconscious perverts of the Jesuit, Time. 
Change is the mask that all Continuance 

wears 
To keep us youngsters harmlessly amused; 
Meanwhile some ailing or more watchful 

child, 
Sitting apart, sees the old eyes gleam out, 



Stern, and yet soft with humorous pity too. 
Whilere, men burnt men for a doubtful 

point, 
As if the mind were quenchable with fire, 
And Faith danced round them with her 

war-paint on, 
Devoutly savage as an Iroquois ; 
Now Calvin and Servetus at one board 
Snuff in grave sympathy a milder roast, 
And o'er their claret settle Comte unread. 
Fagot and stake were desperately sincere: 
Our cooler martyrdoms are done in types; 
And flames that shine in controversial eyes 
Burn out no brains but his who kindles 

them. 
This is no age to get cathedrals built: 
Did God, then, wait for one in Bethlehem ? 
Worst is not yet: lo, where his coming 

looms, 
Of earth's anarchic children latest born, 
Democracy, a Titan who hath learned 
To laugh at Jove's old-fashioned thunder- 
bolts, — 
Could he not also forge them, if he would ? 
He, better skilled, with solvents merciless, 
Loosened in air and borne on every wind, 
Saps unperceived: the calm Olympian 

height 
Of ancient order feels its bases yield, 
And pale gods glance for help to gods as 

pale. 
What will be left of good or worshipful, 
Of spiritual secrets, mysteries, 
Of fair religion's guarded heritage, 
Heirlooms of soul, passed downward un- 

profaned 
From eldest Ind? This Western giant 

coarse, 
Scorning refinements which he lacks him- 
self, 
Loves not nor heeds the ancestral hierar- 
chies, 
Each rank dependent on the next above 
In orderly gradation fixed as fate. 
King by mere manhood, nor allowing 

aught 
Of holier unction than the sweat of toil; 
In his own strength sufficient; called to 

solve, 
On the rough edges of society, 
Problems long sacred to the choicer few, 
And improvise what elsewhere men re- 
ceive 
As gifts of deity; tough foundling reared 
Where every man 's his own Melchisedek, 



THE CATHEDRAL 



357 



How make him reverent of a King of 

kings ? 
Or Judge self-made, executor of laws 
By him not first discussed and voted on ? 
For him no tree of knowledge is forbid, 
Or sweeter if forbid. How save the ark, 
Or holy of holies, unprofaned a day 
From his unscrupulous curiosity 
That handles everything as if to buy, 
Tossing aside what fabrics delicate 
Suit not the rough - and - tumble of his 

ways ? 
What hope for those fine-nerved humani- 
ties 
That made earth gracious once with gentler 

arts, 
Now the rude hands have caught the trick 

of thought 
And claim an equal suffrage with the 
brain ? 

The born disciple of an elder time, 

(To me sufficient, friendlier than the new,) 

Who in my blood feel motions of the 

Past, 
I thank benignant nature most for this, — 
A force of sympathy, or call it lack 
Of character firm-planted, loosing me 
From the pent chamber of habitual self 
To dwell enlarged in alien modes of 

thought, 
Haply distasteful, wholesomer for that, 
And through imagination to possess, 
As they were mine, the lives of other 

men. 
This growth original of virgin soil, 
By fascination felt in opposites, 
Pleases and shocks, entices and perturbs. 
In this brown-fisted rough, this shirt-sleeved 

Cid, 
This backwoods Charlemagne of empires 

new, 
Whose blundering heel instinctively finds 

out 
The goutier foot of speechless dignities, 
Who, meeting Csesar's self, would slap 

his back, 
Call him " Old Horse," and challenge to a 

drink, 
My lungs draw braver air, my breast 

dilates 
With ampler manhood, and I front both 

worlds, 
Of sense and spirit, as my natural fiefs, 
To shape and then reshape them as I will. 



It was the first man's charter; why not 

mine ? 
How forfeit ? when deposed in other hands ? 

Thou shudder'st, Ovid ? Dost in him fore- 
bode 
A new avatar of the large-limbed Goth, 
To break, or seem to break, tradition's 

clue, 
And chase to dreamland back thy gods 

dethroned ? 
I think man's soul dwells nearer to the 

east, 
Nearer to morning's fountains than the 

sun; 
Herself the source whence all tradition 

sprang, 
Herself at once both labyrinth and clue. 
The miracle fades out of history, 
But faith and wonder and the primal earth 
Are born into the world with every child. 
Shall this self -maker with the prying eyes, 
This creature disenchanted of respect 
By the New World's new fiend, Publicity, 
Whose testing thumb leaves everywhere its 

smutch, 
Not one day feel within himself the need 
Of loyalty to better than himself, 
That shall ennoble him with the upward 

look ? 
Shall he not catch the Voice that wanders 

earth, 
With spiritual summons, dreamed or heard, 
As sometimes, just ere sleep seals up the 

sense, 
We hear our mother call from deeps of 

Time, 
And, waking, find it vision, — none the less 
The benediction bides, old skies return, 
And that unreal thing, preeminent, 
Makes air and dream of all we see and 

feel? 
Shall he divine no strength unmade of 

votes, 
Inward, impregnable, found soon as sought, 
Not cognizable of sense, o'er sense su- 
preme ? 
Else were he desolate as none before. 
His holy places may not be of stone, 
Nor made with hands, yet fairer far than 

aught 
By artist feigned or pious ardor reared, 
Fit altars for who guards inviolate 
God's chosen seat, the sacred form of man. 
Doubtless his church will be no hospital 



358 



THE CATHEDRAL 



For superannuate forms and mumping 

shams, 
No parlor where men issue policies 
Of life-assurance on the Eternal Mind, 
Nor his religion but an ambulance 
To fetch life's wounded and malingerers in, 
Scorned by the strong; yet he, unconscious 

heir 
To the influence sweet of Athens and of 

Rome, 
And old Judaea's gift of secret fire, 
Spite of himself shall surely learn to know 
And worship some ideal of himself, 
Some divine thing, large-hearted, bro- 
therly, 
Not nice in trifles, a soft creditor, 
Pleased with his world, and hating only 

cant. 
And, if his Church be doubtful, it is sure 
That, in a world, made for whatever else, 
Not made for mere enjoyment, in a world 
Of toil but half -requited, or, at best, 
Paid in some futile currency of breath, 
A world of incompleteness, sorrow swift 
And consolation laggard, whatsoe'er 
The form of building or the creed pro- 
fessed, 
The Cross, bold type of shame to homage 

turned, 
Of an unfinished life that sways the world, 
Shall tower as sovereign emblem over all. 

The kobold Thought moves with us when 

we shift 
Our dwelling to escape him; perched aloft 
On the first load of household-stuff he 

went;- 
For, where the mind goes, goes old furni- 
ture. 
I, who to Chartres came to feed my eye 
And give to Fancy one clear holiday, 
Scarce saw the minster for the thoughts it 

stirred 
Buzzing o'er past and future with vain 

quest. 
Here once there stood a homely wooden 

church, 
Which slow devotion nobly changed for 

this 
That echoes vaguely to my modern steps. 
By suffrage universal it was built, 
As practised then, for all the country came 
From far as Rouen, to give votes for God, 
Each vote a block of stone securely laid 
Obedient to the master's deep-mused plan. 



Will what our ballots rear, responsible 
To no grave forethought, stand so long as 

this? 
Delight like this the eye of after days 
Brightening with pride that here, at least, 

were men 
Who meant and did the noblest thing they 

knew ? 
Can our religion cope with deeds like this ? 
We, too, build Gothic contract-shams, be- 
cause 
Our deacons have discovered that it pays, 
And pews sell better under vaulted roofs 
Of plaster painted like an Indian squaw. 
Shall not that Western Goth, of whom we 

spoke, 
So fiercely practical, so keen of eye, 
Find out, some day, that nothing pays but 

God, 
Served whether on the smoke-shut battle- 
field, 
In work obscure done honestly, or vote 
For truth unpopular, or faith maintained 
To ruinous convictions, or good deeds 
Wrought for good's sake, mindless of 

heaven or hell ? 
Shall he not learn that all prosperity, 
Whose bases stretch not deeper than the 

sense, 
Is but a trick of this world's atmosphere, 
A desert-born mirage of spire and dome, 
Or find too late, the Past's long lesson 

missed, 
That dust the prophets shake from off 

their feet 
Grows heavy to drag down both tower and 

wall ? 
I know not; but, sustained by sure belief 
That man still rises level with the height 
Of noblest opportunities, or makes 
Such, if the time supply not, I can wait. 
I gaze round on the windows, pride of 

France, 
Each the bright gift of some mechanic 

guild 
Who loved their city and thought gold well 

spent 
To make her beautiful with piety; 
I pause, transfigured by some stripe of 

bloom, 
And my mind throngs with shining augur- 
ies, 
Circle on circle, bright as seraphim, 
With golden trumpets, silent, that await 
The signal to blow news of good to men. 



THE CATHEDRAL 



359 



Then the revulsion came that always conies 
After these dizzy elations of the mind: 
And with a passionate pang of doubt I 

cried, 
" mountain - born, sweet with snow- 
filtered air 
From uncontaminate wells of ether drawn 
And never-broken secrecies of sky, 
Freedom, with anguish won, misprized till 

lost, 
They keep thee not who from thy sacred 

eyes 
Catch the consuming lust of sensual good 
And the brute's license of unfettered will. 
Far from the popular shout and venal 

breath 
Of Cleon blowing the mob's baser mind 
To bubbles of wind-piloted conceit, 
Thou shrinkest, gathering up thy skirts, to 

hide 
In fortresses of solitary thought 
And private virtue strong in self-restraint. 
Must we too forfeit thee misunderstood, 
Content with names, nor inly wise to know 
That best things perish of their own ex- 
cess, 
And quality o'er-driven becomes defect ? 
Nay, is it thou indeed that we have 

glimpsed, 
Or rather such illusion as of old 
Through Athens glided menadlike and 

Rome, 
A shape of vapor, mother of vain dreams 
And mutinous traditions, specious plea 
Of the glaived tyrant and long-memoried 
priest ? " 

I walked forth saddened; for all thought 

is sad, 
And leaves a bitterish savor in the brain, 
Tonic, it may be, not delectable, 
And turned, reluctant, for a parting look 
At those old weather-pitted images 
Of bygone struggle, now so sternly calm. 
About their shoulders sparrows had built 

nests, 
And fluttered, chirping, from gray perch 

to perch, 
Now on a mitre poising, now a crown, 
Irreverently happy. While I thought 
How confident they were, what careless 

hearts 
Flew on those lightsome wings and shared 

the sun, 
A larger shadow crossed; and looking up, 



I saw where, nesting in the hoary towers, 
The sparrow-hawk slid forth on noiseless 

air, 
With sidelong head that watched the joy 

below, 
Grim Norman baron o'er this clan of Kelts. 
Enduring Nature, force conservative, 
Indifferent to our noisy whims ! Men 

prate 
Of all heads to an equal grade cashiered 
On level with the dullest, and expect 
(Sick of no worse distemper than them- 



A wondrous cure-all in equality; 
They reason that To-morrow must be wise 
Because To-day was not, nor Yesterday, 
As if good days were shapen of themselves, 
Not of the very lif eblood of men's souls ; 
Meanwhile, long-suffering, imperturbable, 
Thou quietly complet'st thy syllogism, 
And from the premise sparrow here below 
Draw'st sure conclusion of the hawk above, 
Pleased with the soft - billed songster, 

pleased no less 
With the fierce beak of natures aquiline. 

Thou beautiful Old Time, now hid away 

In the Past's valley of Avilion, 

Haply, like Arthur, till thy wound be 

healed, 
Then to reclaim the sword and crown 



Thrice beautiful to us; perchance less fair 
To who possessed thee, as a mountain 

seems 
To dwellers round its bases but a heap 
Of barren obstacle that lairs the storm 
And the avalanche's silent bolt holds back 
Leashed with a hair, — meanwhile some 

far-off clown, 
Hereditary delver of the plain, 
Sees it an unmoved vision of repose, 
Nest of the morning, and conjectures there 
The dance of streams to idle shepherds' 

pipes, 
And fairer habitations softly hung 
On breezy slopes, or hid in valleys cool, 
For happier men. No mortal ever dreams 
That the scant isthmus he encamps upon 
Between two oceans, one, the Stormy, 



And one, the Peaceful, yet to venture on, 
Has been that future whereto prophets 

yearned 
For the fulfilment of Earth's cheated hope, 



3 6 ° 



THREE MEMORIAL POEMS 



Shall be that past which nerveless poets 

moan 
As the lost opportunity of song. 

O Power, more near my life than life itself 
(Or what seems life to us in sense im- 
mured), 
Even as the roots, shut in the darksome 

earth, 
Share in the tree-top's joyance, and con- 
ceive 
Of sunshine and wide air and winged 

things 
By sympathy of nature, so do I 
Have evidence of Thee so far above, 
Yet in and of me ! Rather Thou the root 
Invisibly sustaining, hid in light, 
Not darkness, or in darkness made by us. 
If sometimes I must hear good men debate 
Of other witness of Thyself than Thou, 



As if there needed any help of ours 

To nurse Thy flickering life, that else 

must cease, 
Blown out, as 't were a candle, by men's 

breath, 
My soul shall not be taken in their snare, 
To change her inward surety for their 

doubt 
Muffled from sight in formal robes of 

proof: 
While she can only feel herself through 

Thee, 
I fear not Thy withdrawal; more I fear, 
Seeing, to know Thee not, hoodwinked with 

dreams 
Of signs and wonders, while, unnoticed, 

Thou, 
Walking Thy garden still, commun'st with 

men, 
Missed in the commonplace of miracle. 



THREE MEMORIAL POEMS 



" Coscienza fusca 
O della propria o dell' altrui vergogna 
Pur sentira latua parola brusca." 

If I let fall a word of bitter mirth 

When public shames more shameful pardon won, 

Some have misjudged me, and my service done, 

If small, yet faithful, deemed of little worth : 

Through veins that drew their life from Western earth 

Two hundred years and more my blood hath run 

In no polluted course from, sire to son ; 

And thus was I predestined ere my birth 

To love the soil wherewith my fibres own 

Instinctive sympathies ; yet love it so 

As honor would, nor lightly to dethrone 

Judgment, the stamp of manhood, nor forego 

The son's right to a mother dearer grown 

With growing knowledge and more chaste than snow. 



To 
E. L. GODKIN, 



IN CORDIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS EMINENT SERVICE 

IN HEIGHTENING AND PURIFYING THE TONE 

OP OUR POLITICAL THOUGHT, 

<€fa£e (Cfree poemg 

ARE DEDICATED. 



*#* Headers, it is hoped, will remember that, by his Ode at the Harvard Commemo- 
ration, the author had precluded himself from many of the natural outlets of thought 
and feeling common to such occasions as are celebrated in these poems. 



ODE READ AT CONCORD 



361 



ODE 

READ AT THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNI- 
VERSARY OF THE FIGHT AT CONCORD 
BRIDGE 

19TH April, 1875 

In the letter to Mr. Thayer quoted in the 
note introducing the Commemoration Ode, 
Lowell wrote at some length regarding- the 
structure of his odes in general. He added : 
" The sentiment of the Concord Ode demanded 
a larger proportion of lyrical movements, of 
course, than the others. Harmony, without 
sacrifice of melody, was what I had mainly in 
view." He wrote to another friend that the 
ode was " an improvisation written in the two 
days before the celebration." 



Who cometh over the hills, 
Her garments with morning sweet, 
The dance of a thousand rills 
Making music before her feet? 
Her presence freshens the air; 
Sunshine steals light from her face; 
The leaden footstep of Care 
Leaps to the tune of her pace, 
Fairness of all that is fair, 
Grace at the heart of all grace, 
Sweetener of hut and of hall, 
Bringer of life out of naught, 
Freedom, oh, fairest of all 
The daughters of Time and Thought! 



She cometh, cometh to-day: 
Hark ! hear ye not her tread, 
Sending a thrill through your clay, 
Under the sod there, ye dead, 
Her nurslings and champions ? 
Do ye not hear, as she comes, 
The bay of the deep-mouthed guns, 
The gathering rote of the drums ? 
The bells that called ye to prayer, 
How wildly they clamor on her, 
Crying, " She cometh ! prepare 
Her to praise and her to honor, 
That a hundred years ago 
Scattered here in blood and tears 
Potent seeds wherefrom should grow 
Gladness for a hundred years ! " 



Tell me, young men, have ye seen 

Creature of diviner mien 

For true hearts to long and cry for, 

Manly hearts to live and die for ? 

What hath she that others want ? 

Brows that all endearments haunt, 

Eyes that make it sweet to dare, 

Smiles that cheer untimely death, 

Looks that fortify despair, 

Tones more brave than trumpet's breath; 

Tell me, maidens, have ye known 

Household charm more sweetly rare, 

Grace of woman ampler blown, 

Modesty more debonair, 

Younger heart with wit full grown ? 

Oh for an hour of my prime, 

The pulse of my hotter years, 

That I might praise her in rhyme 

Would tingle your eyelids to tears, 

Our sweetness, our strength, and our star, 

Our hope, our joy, and our trust, 

Who lifted us out of the dust, 

And made us whatever we are ! 



Whiter than moonshine upon snow 

Her raiment is, but round the hem 

Crimson stained; and, as to and fro 

Her sandals flash, we see on them, 

And on her instep veined with blue, 

Flecks of crimson, on those fair feet, 

High-arched, Diana-like, and fleet, 

Fit for no grosser stain than dew: 

Oh, call them rather chrisms than stains. 

Sacred and from heroic veins ! 

For, in the glory-guarded pass, 

Her haughty and far-shining head 

She bowed to shrive Leonidas 

With his imperishable dead; 

Her, too, Morgarten saw, 

Where the Swiss lion fleshed his icy paw; 

She followed Cromwell's quenchless star 

Where the grim Puritan tread 

Shook Marston, Naseby, and Dunbar: 

Yea, on her feet are dearer dyes 

Yet fresh, nor looked on with untearful 



Our fathers found her in the woods 
Where Nature meditates and broods, 
The seeds of unexampled things 



362 



THREE MEMORIAL POEMS 



Which Time to consummation brings 
Through life and death and man's unstable 

moods ; 
They met her here, not recognized, 
A sylvan huntress clothed in furs, 
To whose chaste wants her bow sufficed, 
Nor dreamed what destinies were hers: 
She taught them bee-like to create 
Their simpler forms of Church and State; 
She taught them to endue 
The past with other functions than it knew, 
And turn in channels strange the uncertain 

stream of Fate; 
Better than all, she fenced them in their 

need 
With iron-handed Duty's sternest creed, 
'Gainst Self's lean wolf that ravens word 

and deed. 



Why cometh she hither to-day 
To this low village of the plain 
Far from the Present's loud highway, 
From Trade's cool heart and seething brain? 
Why cometh she ? She was not far away. 
Since the soul touched it, not in vain, 
With pathos of immortal gain, 
'Tis here her fondest memories stay. 
She loves yon pine-bemurmured ridge 
Where now our broad-browed poet sleeps, 
Dear to both Englands ; near him he 
Who wore the ring of Canace; 
But most her heart to rapture leaps 
Where stood that era-parting bridge, 
O'er which, with footfall still as dew, 
The Old Time passed into the New; 
Where, as your stealthy river creeps, 
He whispers to his listening weeds 
Tales of sublimest homespun deeds. 
Here English law and English thought 
'Gainst the self-will of England fought ; 
And here were men (coequal with their 

fate), 
Who did great things, unconscious they 

were great. 
They dreamed not what a die was cast 
With that first answering shot; what then? 
There was their duty; they were men 
Schooled the soul's inward gospel to obey, 
Though leading to the lion's den. 
They felt the habit-hallowed world give way 
Beneath their lives, and on went they, 
Unhappy who was last. 
When Buttrick gave the word, 
That awful idol of the unchallenged Past, 



Strong in their love, and in their lineage 
strong, 

Fell crashing: if they heard it not, 

Yet the earth heard, 

Nor ever hath forgot, 

As on from startled throne to throne, 

Where Superstition sate or conscious 
Wrong, 

A shudder ran of some dread birth un- 
known. 

Thrice venerable spot ! 

River more fateful than the Rubicon ! 

O'er those red planks, to snatch her diadem, 

Man's Hope, star-girdled, sprang with them, 

And over ways untried the feet of Doom 
strode on. 



Think you these felt no charms 

In their gray homesteads and embowered 

farms ? 
In household faces waiting at the door 
Their evening step should lighten up no 

more ? 
In fields their boyish feet had known ? 
In trees their fathers' hands had set, 
And which with them had grown, 
Widening each year their leafy coronet ? 
Felt they no pang of passionate regret 
For those unsolid goods that seem so much 

our own ? 
These things are dear to every man that 

lives, 
And life prized more for what it lends than 

gives. 
Yea, many a tie, through iteration sweet, 
Strove to detain their fatal feet; 
And yet the enduring half they chose, 
Whose choice decides a man life's slave or 

king, 
The invisible things of God before the seen 

and known: 
Therefore their memory inspiration blows 
With echoes gathering on from zone to 

zone; 
For manhood is the one immortal thing 
Beneath Time's changeful sky, 
And, where it lightened once, from age to 

age, 
Men come to learn, in grateful pilgrimage, 
That length of days is knowing when to die. 



What marvellous change of things and men ! 
She, a world- wandering orphan then, 



ODE READ AT CONCORD 



3*3 



So mighty now ! Those are her streams 
That whirl the myriad, myriad wheels 
Of all that does, and all that dreams, 
Of all that thinks, and all that feels, 
Through spaces stretched from sea to sea; 
By idle tongues and busy brains, 
By who doth right, and who refrains, 
Hers are our losses and our gains; 
Our maker and our victim she. 



Maiden half mortal, half divine, 
We triumphed in thy coming; to the brinks 
Our hearts were filled with pride's tumul- 
tuous wine; 
Better to-day who rather feels than thinks. 
Yet will some graver thoughts intrude, 
And cares of sterner mood; 
They won thee: who shall keep thee ? From 

the deeps 
Where discrowned empires o'er their ruins 

brood, 
And many a thwarted hope wrings its weak 

hands and weeps, 
I hear the voice as of a mighty wind 
From all heaven's caverns rushing uncon- 

fined, 
"I, Freedom, dwell with Knowledge: I 

abide 
With men whom dust of faction cannot blind 
To the slow tracings of the Eternal Mind; 
With men by culture trained and fortified, 
Who bitter duty to sweet lusts prefer, 
Fearless to counsel and obey. 
Conscience my sceptre is, and law my 

sword, 
Not to be drawn in passion or in play, 
But terrible to punish and deter; 
Implacable as God's word, 
Like it, a shepherd's crook to them that 

blindly err. 
Your firm-pulsed sires, my martyrs and my 

saints, 
Offshoots of that one stock whose patient 



Hath known to mingle flux with perma- 
nence, 

Rated my chaste denials and restraints 

Above the moment's dear-paid paradise: 

Beware lest, shifting with Time's gradual 
creep, 

The light that guided shine into your eyes. 

The envious Powers of ill nor wink nor 
sleep : 

Be therefore timely wise, 



Nor laugh when this one steals, and that 

one lies, 
As if your luck could cheat those sleepless 

spies, 
Till the deaf Fury comes your house to 

sweep ! " 
I hear the voice, and unaffrighted bow; 
Ye shall not be prophetic now, 
Heralds of ill, that darkening fly 
Between my vision and the rainbowed sky, 
Or on the left your hoarse forebodings 

croak 
From many a blasted bough 
On Yggdrasil's storm-sinewed oak, 
That once was green, Hope of the West, as 

thou: 
Yet pardon if I tremble while I boast; 
For I have loved as those who pardon most. 



Away, ungrateful doubt, away ! . 
At least she is our own to-day. 
Break into rapture, my song, 
Verses, leap forth in the sun, 
Bearing the joyance along 
Like a train of fire as ye run ! 
Pause not for choosing of words, 
Let them but blossom and sing 
Blithe as the orchards and birds 
With the new coming of spring ! 
Dance in your jollity, bells ; 
Shout, cannon; cease not, ye drums; 
Answer, ye hillside and dells; 
Bow, all ye people ! She comes, 
Radiant, calm-fronted, as when 
She hallowed that April day. 
Stay with us ! Yes, thou shalt stay, 
Softener and strengthener of men, 
Freedom, not won by the vain, 
Not to be courted in play, 
Not to be kept without pain. 
Stay with us ! Yes, thou wilt stay, 
Handmaid and mistress of all, 
Kindler of deed and of thought, 
Thou that to hut and to hall 
Equal deliverance brought ! 
Souls of her martyrs, draw near, 
Touch our dull lips with your fire, 
That we may praise without fear 
Her our delight, our desire, 
Our faith's inextinguishable star, 
Our hope, our remembrance, our trust, 
Our present, our past, our to be, 
Who will mingle her life with our dust 
And makes us deserve to be free ! 



3 6 4 



THREE MEMORIAL POEMS 



UNDER THE OLD ELM 

POEM READ AT CAMBRIDGE ON THE 
HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF WASH- 
INGTON'S TAKING COMMAND OF THE 
AMERICAN ARMY, 3D JULY, 1 775 

Lowell was disposed to think this ode the 
best of these three memorial odes, " mainly be- 
cause," he says, "it was composed after my 
college duties were over, though even in that 
I was distracted by the intervention of the 
Commencement dinner." Two days after de- 
livering it, he wrote to a friend in another 
State : " We, too, here in my birthplace, hav- 
ing found out that something happened here 
a hundred years ago, must have our centen- 
nial ; and, since my friend and townsman Dr. 
Holmes could n't be had, I felt bound to do 
the poetry for the day. We have still stand- 
ing the elm under which Washington took 
command of the American (till then provin- 
cial) army, and under which also Whitefield 
had preached some thirty years before. I took 
advantage of the occasion to hold out a hand 
of kindly reconciliation to Virginia. I could 
do it with the profounder feeling, that no 
family lost more than mine by the civil war. 
Three nephews (the hope of our race) were 
killed in one or other of the Virginia battles, 
and three cousins on other of those bloody 
fields." Lowell afterward, when he was in 
Baltimore giving lectures at Johns Hopkins 
University, read a part of this poem in public. 
" I actually drew tears," he wrote, " from the 
eyes of bitter secessionists — comparable with 
those iron ones that rattled down Pluto's cheek. 
I did n't quite like to read the invocation to 
Virginia here — I was willing enough three or 
four hundred miles north — but I think it did 
good." 

I 



Words pass as wind, but where great 

deeds were done 
A power abides transfused from sire to 

son: 
The boy feels deeper meanings thrill his 

ear, 
That tingling through his pulse life-long 

shall run, 
With sure impulsion to keep honor clear, 
When, pointing down, his father whispers, 

" Here, 
Here, where we stand, stood he, the purely 

great, 



Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere, 
Then nameless, now a power and mixed 

with fate." 
Historic town, thou holdest sacred dust, 
Once known to men as pious, learned, just, 
And one memorial pile that dares to last; 
But Memory greets with reverential kiss 
No spot in all thy circuit sweet as this, 
Touched by that modest glory as it past, 
O'er which yon elm hath piously displayed 
These hundred years its monumental shade. 



Of our swift passage through this scenery 
Of life and death, more durable than we, 
What landmark so congenial as a tree 
Repeating its green legend every spring, 
And, with a yearly ring, 
Recording the fair seasons as they flee, 
Type of our brief but still-renewed mortal- 
ity ? 
We fall as leaves : the immortal trunk re- 
mams, 
Builded with costly juice of hearts and 

brains 
Gone to the mould now, whither all that 

be 
Vanish returnless, yet are procreant still 
In human lives to come of good or ill, 
And feed unseen the roots of Destiny. 



Men's monuments, grown old, forget their 

names 
They should eternize, but the place 
Where shining souls have passed imbibes a 

grace 
Beyond mere earth; some sweetness of 

their fames 
Leaves in the soil its unextinguished trace, 
Pungent, pathetic, sad with nobler aims, 
That penetrates our lives and heightens 

them or shames. 
This insubstantial world and fleet 
Seems solid for a moment when we stand 
On dust ennobled by heroic feet 
Once mighty to sustain a tottering land, 
And mighty still such burthen to upbear, 
Nor doomed to tread the path of things 

that merely were: 
Our sense, refined with virtue of the spot, 
Across the mists of Lethe's sleepy stream 
Recalls him, the sole chief without a blot, 



UNDER THE OLD ELM 



365 



No more a pallid image and a dream, 
But as he dwelt with men decorously su- 
preme. 

2. 

Our grosser minds need this terrestrial 

hint 
To raise long-buried days from tombs of 

print: 
" Here stood he," softly we repeat, 
And lo, the statue shrined and still 
In that gray minster-front we call the Past, 
Feels in its frozen veins our pulses thrill, 
Breathes living air and mocks at Death's 

deceit. 
It warms, it stirs, comes down to us at last, 
Its features human with familiar light, 
A man, beyond the historian's art to kill, 
Or sculptor's to efface with patient chisel- 
blight. 



Sure the dumb earth hath memory, nor for 

naught 
Was Fancy given, on whose enchanted 

loom 
Present and Past commingle, fruit and 

bloom 
Of one fair bough, inseparably wrought 
Into the seamless tapestry of thought. 
So charmed, with undeluded eye we see 
In history's fragmentary tale 
Bright clues of continuity, 
Learn that high natures over Time prevail, 
And feel ourselves a link in that entail 
That binds all ages past with all that are 

to be. 



Beneath our consecrated elm 

A century ago he stood, 

Famed vaguely for that old fight in the 
wood 

Whose red surge sought, but could not 
overwhelm 

The life foredoomed to wield our rough- 
hewn helm: — 

From colleges, where now the gown 

To arms had yielded, from the town, 

Our rude self-summoned levies flocked to 
see 

The new-come chiefs and wonder which 
was he. 



No need to question long; close-lipped 

and tall, 
Long trained in murder-brooding forests 

lone 
To bridle others' clamors and his own, 
Firmly erect, he towered above them all, 
The incarnate discipline that was to free 
With iron curb that armed democracy. 



A motley rout was that which came to 

stare, 
In raiment tanned by years of sun and 

storm, 
Of every shape that was not uniform, 
Dotted with regimentals here and there; 
An army all of captains, used to pray 
And stiff in fight, but serious drill's despair, 
Skilled to debate their orders, not obey; 
Deacons were there, selectmen, men of 

note 
In half-tamed hamlets ambushed round 

with woods, 
Keady to settle Freewill by a vote, 
But largely liberal to its private moods; 
Prompt to assert by manners, voice, or pen, 
Or ruder arms, their rights as Englishmen, 
Nor much fastidious as to how and when: 
Yet seasoned stuff and fittest to create 
A thought-staid army or a lasting state: 
Haughty they said he was, at first; severe; 
But owned, as all men own, the steady 

hand 
Upon the bridle, patient to command, 
Prized, as all prize, the justice pure from 

fear, 
And learned to honor first, then love him, 

then revere. 
Such power there is in clear-eyed self- 
restraint 
And purpose clean as light from every 

selfish taint. 

3- 
Musing beneath the legendary tree, 
The years between furl off: I seem to see 
The sun-flecks, shaken the stirred foliage 

through, 
Dapple with gold his sober buff and blue 
And weave prophetic aureoles round the 

head 
That shines our beacon now nor darkens 

with the dead. 
O man of silent mood, 
A stranger among strangers then, 



3 66 



THREE MEMORIAL POEMS 



How art thou since renowned the Great, 

the Good, 
Familiar as the day in all the homes of 

men ! 
The winged years, that winnow praise and 

blame, 
Blow many names out : they but fan to 

flame 
The self-renewing splendors of thy fame. 

IV 



How many subtlest influences unite, 
With spiritual touch of joy or pain, 
Invisible as air and soft as light, 
To body forth that image of the brain 
We call our Country, visionary shape, 
Loved more than woman, fuller of fire 

than wine, 
Whose charm can none define, 
Nor any, though he flee it, can escape ! 
All party-colored threads the weaver Time 
Sets in his web, now trivial, now sublime, 
All memories, all forebodings, hopes and 

fears, 
Mountain and river, forest, prairie, sea, 
A hill, a rock, a homestead, field, or tree, 
The casual gleanings of unreckoned years, 
Take goddess-shape at last and there is 

She, 
Old at our birth, new as the springing 

hours, 
Shrine of our weakness, fortress of our 

powers, 
Consoler, kindler, peerless 'mid her peers, 
A force that 'neath our conscious being 

stirs, 
A life to give ours permanence, when we 
Are borne to mingle our poor earth with 

hers, 
And all this glowing world goes with us on 

our biers. 



Nations are long results, by ruder ways 

Gathering the might that warrants length 
of days; 

They may be pieced of half - reluctant 
shares 

Welded by hammer - strokes of broad- 
brained kings, 

Or from a doughty people grow, the heirs 

Of wise traditions widening cautious rings; 

At best they are computable things, 



A strength behind us making us feel bold 
In right, or, as may chance, in wrong; 
Whose force by figures may be summed 

and told, 
So many soldiers, ships, and dollars strong, 
And we but drops that bear compulsory 

part 
In the dumb throb of a mechanic heart; 
But Country is a shape of each man's 

mind 
Sacred from definition, unconfined 
By the cramped walls where daily drudger- 
ies grind; 
An inward vision, yet an outward birth 
Of sweet familiar heaven and earth; 
A brooding Presence that stirs motions 

blind 
Of wings within our embryo being's shell 
That wait but her completer spell 
To make us eagle-natured, fit to dare 
Life's nobler spaces and untarnished air. 



You, who hold dear this self - conceived 

ideal, 
Whose faith and works alone can make it 

real, 
Bring all your fairest gifts to deck her 

shrine 
Who lifts our lives away from Thine and 

Mine 
And feeds the lamp of manhood more di- 
vine 
With fragrant oils of quenchless constancy. 
When all have done their utmost, surely he 
Hath given the best who gives a character 
Erect and constant, which nor any shock 
Of loosened elements, nor the forceful sea 
Of flowing or of ebbing fates, can stir 
From its deep bases in the living rock 
Of ancient manhood's sweet security : 
And this he gave, serenely far from pride 
As baseness, boon with prosperous stars 

allied, 
Part of what nobler seed shall in our loins 

abide. 

4- 

No bond of men as common pride so 

strong, 
In names time-filtered for the lips of song, 
Still operant, with the primal Forces bound 
Whose currents, on their spiritual round, 
Transfuse our mortal will nor are gain- 
said : 



UNDER THE OLD ELM 



367 



These are their arsenals, these the exhaust- 
less mines 

That give a constant heart in great de- 
signs ; 

These are the stuff whereof such dreams 
are made 

As make heroic men : thus surely he 

Still holds in place the massy blocks he 
laid 

'Neath our new frame, enforcing soberly 

The self-control that makes and keeps a 
people free. 



Oh, for a drop of that Cornelian ink 
Which gave Agricola dateless length of 

days, 
To celebrate him fitly, neither swerve 
To phrase unkempt, nor pass discretion's 

brink, 
With him so statue-like in sad reserve, 
So diffident to claim, so forward to de- 
serve ! 
Nor need I shun due influence of his fame 
Who, mortal among mortals, seemed as 

now 
The equestrian shape with unimpassioned 

brow, 
That paces silent on through vistas of ac- 
claim. 



What figure more immovably august 
Than that grave strength so patient and so 

pure, 
Calm in good fortune, when it wavered, 

sure, 
That mind serene, impenetrably just, 
Modelled on classic lines so simple they 

endure ? 
That soul so softly radiant and so white 
The track it left seems less of fire than 

light, 
Cold but to such as love distemperature ? 
And if pure light, as some deem, be the 

force 
That drives rejoicing planets on their 

course, 
Why for his power benign seek an impurer 

source ? 
His was the true enthusiasm that burns 

long, 
Domestically bright, 



Fed from itself and shy of human sight, 
The hidden force that makes a lifetime 

strong, 
And not the short-lived fuel of a song. 
Passionless, say you ? What is passion 

for 
But to sublime our natures and control 
To front heroic toils with late return, 
Or none, or such as shames the conqueror ? 
That fire was fed with substance of the 

soul 
And not with holiday stubble, that could 

burn, 
Unpraised of men who after bonfires run, 
Through seven slow years of unadvancing 

war, 
Equal when fields were lost or fields were 

won, 
With breath of popular applause or blame, 
Nor fanned nor damped, unquenchably the 

same, 
Too inward to be reached by flaws of idle 

fame. 



Soldier and statesman, rarest unison ; 
High-poised example of great duties done 
Simply as breathing, a world's honors worn 
As life's indifferent gifts to all men born; 
Dumb for himself, unless it were to God, 
But for his barefoot soldiers eloquent, 
Tramping the snow to coral where they 

trod, 
Held by his awe in hollow-eyed content; 
Modest, yet firm as Nature's self; un- 

blamed 
Save by the men his nobler temper 

shamed; 
Never seduced through show of present 

good 
By other than unsetting lights to steer 
New -trimmed in Heaven, nor than his 

steadfast mood 
More steadfast, far from rashness as from 

fear; 
Rigid, but with himself first, grasping still 
In swerveless poise the wave-beat helm of 

will; 
Not honored then or now because he wooed 
The popular voice, but that he still with- 
stood ; 
Broad-minded, higher-souled, there is but 

one 
Who was all this and ours, and all men's, 

— Washington. 



3 68 



THREE MEMORIAL POEMS 



Minds strong by fits, irregularly great, 
That flash and darken like revolving lights, 
Catch more the vulgar eye unschooled to 

wait 
On the long curve of patient days and 



Rounding a whole life to the circle fair 
Of orbed fulfilment; and this balanced 

soul, 
So simple in its grandeur, coldly bare 
Of draperies theatric, standing there 
In perfect symmetry of self-control, 
Seems not so great at first, but greater 

grows 
Still as we look, and by experience learn 
How grand this quiet is, how nobly stern 
The discipline that wrought through life- 
long throes 
That energetic passion of repose. 

5- 
A nature too decorous and severe, 
Too self -respectful in its griefs and joys, 
For ardent girls and boys 
Who find no genius in a mind so clear 
That its grave depths seem obvious and 

near, 
Nor a soul great that made so little noise. 
They feel no force in that calm-cadenced 

phrase, 
The habitual full-dress of his well-bred 

mind, 
That seems to pace the minuet's courtly 

maze 
And tell of ampler leisures, roomier length 

of days. 
His firm-based brain, to self so little kind 
That no tumultuary blood could blind, 
Formed to control men, not amaze, 
Looms not like those that borrow height of 

haze : 
It was a world of statelier movement then 
Than this we fret in, he a denizen 
Of that ideal Rome that made a man for 



VI 

i. 

The longer on this earth we live 

And weigh the various qualities of men, 

Seeing how most are fugitive, 

Or fitful gifts, at best, of now and then, 



Wind-wavered corpse-lights, daughters of 

the fen, 
The more we feel the high stern-featured 

beauty 
Of plain devoted ness to duty, 
Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal 

praise, 
But finding amplest recompense 
For life's ungarlanded expense 
In work done squarely and unwasted days. 
For this we honor him, that he could know 
How sweet the service and how free 
Of her, God's eldest daughter here below, 
And choose in meanest raiment which was 

she. 



Placid completeness, life without a fall 
From faith or highest aims, truth's breach- 
less wall, 
Surely if any fame can bear the touch, 
His will say " Here ! " at the last trumpet's 

call, 
The unexpressive man whose life expressed 
so much. 



Never to see a nation born 
Hath been given to mortal man, 
Unless to those who, on that summer morn, 
Gazed silent when the great Virginian 
Unsheathed the sword whose fatal flash 
Shot union through the incoherent clash 
Of our loose atoms, crystallizing them 
Around a single will's unpliant stem, 
And making purpose of emotion rash. 
Out of that scabbard sprang, as from its 

womb, 
Nebulous at first but hardening to a star, 
Through mutual share of sunburst and of 

gloom, 
The common faith that made us what we 



That lifted blade transformed our jangling 

clans, 
Till then provincial, to Americans, 
And made a unity of wjjdering plans; 
Here was the doom fixed: here is marked 

the date 
When this New World awoke to man's 

estate, 



UNDER THE OLD ELM 



369 



Burnt its last ship and ceased to look be- 
hind: 
Nor thoughtless was the choice; no love or 

hate 
Could from its poise move that deliberate 

mind, 
Weighing between too early and too late 
Those pitfalls of the man refused by Fate: 
His was the impartial vision of the great 
Who see not as they wish, but as they find. 
He saw the dangers of defeat, nor less 
The incomputable perils of success; 
The sacred past thrown by, an empty rind; 
The future, cloud-land, snare of prophets 

blind; 
The waste of war, the ignominy of peace ; 
On either hand a sullen rear of woes, 
Whose garnered lightnings none could 

guess, 
Piling its thunder - heads and muttering 

" Cease ! " 
Yet drew not back his hand, but gravely 

chose 
The seeming-desperate task whence our 

new nation rose. 



A noble choice and of immortal seed ! 
Nor deem that acts heroic wait on chance 
Or easy were as in a boy's romance; 
The man's whole life preludes the single 

deed 
That shall decide if his inheritance 
Be with the sifted few of matchless breed, 
Our race's sap and sustenance, 
Or with the unmotived herd that only sleep 

and feed. 
Choice seems a thing indifferent; thus or so, 
What matters it ? The Fates with mock- 
ing face < 
Look on inexorable, nor seem to know 
Where the lot lurks that gives life's fore- 
most place. 
Yet Duty's leaden casket holds it still, 
And but two ways are offered to our will, 
Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe dis- 
grace, 
The problem still for us and all of human 

race. 
He chose, as men choose, where most dan- 
ger showed, 
Nor ever faltered 'neath the load 
Of petty cares, that gall great hearts the 

most, 
But kept right on the strenuous up-hill road, 



Strong to the end, above complaint or boast: 
The popular* tempest on his rock-mailed 

coast 
Wasted its wind-borne spray, 
The noisy marvel of a day; 
His soul sate still in its unstormed abode. 



Virginia gave us this imperial man 

Cast in the massive mould 

Of those high-statured ages old 

Which into grander forms our mortal metal 

ran; 
She gave us this unblemished gentleman: 
What shall we give her back but love and 

praise 
As in the dear old unestranged days 
Before the inevitable wrong began ? 
Mother of States and undiminished men, 
Thou gavest us a country, giving him, 
And we owe alway what we owed thee then: 
The boon thou wouldst have snatched from 

us agen 
Shines as before with no abatement dim. 
A great man's memory is the only thing 
With influence to outlast the present whim 
And bind us as when here he knit our 

golden ring. 
All of him that was subject to the hours 
Lies in thy soil and makes it part of ours: 
Across more recent graves, 
Where unresentful Nature waves 
Her pennons o'er the shot-ploughed sod, 
Proclaiming the sweet Truce of God, 
We from this consecrated plain stretch out 
Our hands as free from afterthought or 

doubt 
As here the united North 
Poured her embrowned manhood forth 
In welcome of our savior and thy son. 
Through battle we have better learned thy 

worth, 
The long-breathed valor and undaunted 

will, 
Which, like his own, the day's disaster 

done, 
Could, safe in manhood, suffer and be still. 
Both thine and ours the victory hardly 

won; 
If ever with distempered voice or pen 
We have misdeemed thee, here we take it 

back, 
And for the dead of both don common 

black. 
Be to us evermore as thou wast then, 



37° 



THREE MEMORIAL POEMS 



As we forget thou hast not always been, 
Mother of States and unpolluted men, 
Virginia, fitly named from England's manly 



queen! 



AN ODE 



FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1876 



Entranced I saw a vision in the cloud 
That loitered dreaming in yon sunset sky, 
Full of fair shapes, half creatures of the 

eye, 
Half chance-evoked by the wind's fantasy 
In golden mist, an ever-shifting crowd: 
There, 'mid unreal forms that came and 

went 
In air-spun robes, of evanescent dye, 
A woman's semblance shone preeminent; 
Not armed like Pallas, not like Hera proud, 
But, as on household diligence intent, 
Beside her visionary wheel she bent 
Like Arete or Bertha, nor than they 
Less queenly in her port : about her knee 
Glad children clustered confident in play: 
Placid her pose, the calm of energy; 
And over her broad brow in many a round 
(That loosened would have gilt her gar- 
ment's hem), 
Succinct, as toil prescribes, the hair was 

wound 
In lustrous coils, a natural diadem. 
The cloud changed shape, obsequious to the 

whim 
Of some transmuting influence felt in me, 
And, looking now, a wolf I seemed to see 
Limned in that vapor, gaunt and hunger- 
bold, 
Threatening her charge: resolve in every 

limb, 
Erect she flamed in mail of sun-wove gold, 
Penthesilea's self for battle dight; 
One arm uplifted braced a flickering spear, 
And one her adamantine shield made light ; 
Her face, helm-shadowed, grew a thing to 

fear, 
And her fierce eyes, by danger challenged, 

took 
Her trident - sceptred mother's dauntless 

look. 
" I know thee now, O goddess-born ! " I 
cried, 



And turned with loftier brow and firmer 

stride ; 
For in that spectral cloud-work I had seen 
Her image, bodied forth by love and pride, 
The fearless, the benign, the mother-eyed, 
The fairer world's toil-consecrated queen. 



What shape by exile dreamed elates the 

mind 
Like hers whose hand, a fortress of the 

poor, 
No blood in vengeance spilt, though lawful, 

stains ? 
Who never turned a suppliant from her 

door? 
Whose conquests are the gains of all man- 
kind ? 
To-day her thanks shall fly on every wind, 
Unstinted, unrebuked, from shore to shore, 
One love, one hope, and not a doubt behind ! 
Cannon to cannon shall repeat her praise, 
Banner to banner flap it forth in flame ; 
Her children shall rise up to bless her 

name, 
And wish her harmless length of days, 
The mighty mother of a mighty brood, 
Blessed in all tongues and dear to every 

blood, 
The beautiful, the strong, and, best of all, 

the good. 



Seven years long was the bow 
Of battle bent, and the heightening 
Storm-heaps convulsed with the throe 
Of their uncontainable lightning; 
Seven years long heard the sea 
Crash of navies and wave-borne thunder; 
Then drifted the cloud- rack a-lee, 
And new stars were seen, a world's won- 
der; 
Each by her sisters made bright, 
All binding all to their stations, 
Cluster of manifold light 
Startling the old constellations: 
Men looked up and grew pale : 
Was it a comet or star, 
Omen of blessing or bale, 
Hung o'er the ocean afar ? 



Stormy the day of her birth: 
Was she not born of the strong, 
She, the last ripeness of earth, 



ODE FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1876 



37i 



Beautiful, prophesied long ? 
Stormy the days of her prime: 
Hers are the pulses that beat 
Higher for perils sublime, 
Making them fawn at her feet. 
Was she not born of the strong ? 
Was she not born of the wise ? 
Daring and counsel belong 
Of right to her confident eyes: 
Human and motherly they, 
Careless of station or race: 
Hearken ! her children to-day 
Shout for the joy of her face. 



No praises of the past are hers, 

No fanes by hallowing time caressed, 

No broken arch that ministers 

To Time's sad instinct in the breast: 

She has not gathered from the years 

Grandeur of tragedies and tears, 

Nor from long leisure the unrest 

That finds repose in forms of classic grace : 

These may delight the coming race 

Who haply shall not count it to our crime 

That we who fain would sing are here 

before our time. 
She also hath her monuments; 
Not such as stand decrepitly resigned 
To ruin-mark the path of dead events 
That left no seed of better days behind, 
The tourist's pensioners that show their 

scars 
And maunder of forgotten wars ; 
She builds not on the ground, but in the 

mind, 
Her open-hearted palaces 
For larger-thoughted men with heaven and 

earth at ease : 
Her march the plump mow marks, the 

sleepless wheel, 
The golden sheaf, the self-swayed com- 
monweal ; 
The happy homesteads hid in orchard 

trees 
Whose sacrificial smokes through peaceful 

air 
Rise lost in heaven, the household's silent 

prayer; 

What architect hath bettered these ? 
With softened eye the westward traveller 

sees 
A thousand miles of neighbors side by side, 



Holding by toil-won titles fresh from God 
The lands no serf or seigneur ever trod, 
With manhood latent in the very sod, 
Where the long billow of the wheatfield's 

tide 
Flows to the sky across the prairie wide, 
A sweeter vision than the castled Rhine, 
Kindly with thoughts of Ruth and Bible- 
days benign. 



O ancient commonwealths, that we revere 
Haply because we could not know you 

near, 
Your deeds like statues down the aisles of 

Time 
Shine peerless in memorial calm sublime, 
And Athens is a trumpet still, and Rome; 
Yet which of your achievements is not foam 
Weighed with this one of hers (below you 

far 
In fame, and born beneath a milder star), 
That to Earth's orphans, far as curves the 

dome 
Of death-deaf sky, the bounteous West 

means home, 
With dear precedency of natural ties 
That stretch from roof to roof and make 

men gently wise ? 
And if the nobler passions wane, 
Distorted to base use, if the near goal 
Of insubstantial gain 
Tempt from the proper race-course of the 

soul 
That crowns their patient breath 
Whose feet, song-sandalled, are too fleet 

for Death, 
Yet may she claim one privilege urbane 
And haply first upon the civic roll, 
That none can breathe her air nor grow 

humane. 



Oh, better far the briefest hour 

Of Athens self-consumed, whose plastic 

power 
Hid Beauty safe from Death in words or 

stone ; 
Of Rome, fair quarry where those eagles 

crowd 
Whose fulgurous vans about the world had 

blown 
Triumphant storm and seeds of polity; 
Of Venice, fading o'er her shipless sea, 
Last iridescence of a sunset cloud; 



37 2 



THREE MEMORIAL POEMS 



Than this inert prosperity, 
This bovine comfort in the sense alone ! 
Yet art came slowly even to such as those, 
Whom no past genius cheated of their own 
With prudence of o'ermastering precedent ; 
Petal by petal spreads the perfect rose, 
Secure of the divine event; 
And only children rend the bud half -blown 
To forestall Nature in her calm intent: 
Time hath a quiver full of purposes 
Which miss not of their aim, to us un- 
known, 
And brings about the impossible with ease : 
Haply for us the ideal dawn shall break 
From where in legend-tinted line 
The peaks of Hellas drink the morning's 

wine, 
To tremble on our lids with mystic sign 
Till the drowsed ichor in our veins awake 
And set our pulse in tune with moods 

divine: 
Long the day lingered in its sea-fringed 

nest, 
Then touched the Tuscan hills with golden 

lance 
And paused; then on to Spain and France 
The splendor flew, and Albion's misty 

crest: 
Shall Ocean bar him from his destined 

West? 
Or are we, then, arrived too late, 
Doomed with the rest to grope disconsolate, 
Foreclosed of Beauty by our modern date ? 



Poets, as their heads grow gray, 
Look from too far behind the eyes, 
Too long-experienced to be wise 
In guileless youth's diviner way; 
Life sings not now, but prophesies ; 
Time's shadows they no more behold, 
But, under them, the riddle old 
That mocks, bewilders, and defies: 
In childhood's face the seed of shame, 
In the green tree an ambushed flame, 
In Phosphor a vaunt-guard of Night, 
They, though against their will, divine, 
And dread the care-dispelling wine 
Stored from the Muse's vintage bright, 
By age imbued with second-sight. 
From Faith's own eyelids there peeps out, 
Even as they look, the leer of doubt; 
The festal wreath their fancy loads 



With care that whispers and forebodes : 
Nor this our triumph-day can blunt Me- 



Murmur of many voices in the air 
Denounces us degenerate, 
Unfaithful guardians of a noble fate, 
And prompts indifference or despair: 
Is this the country that we dreamed in 

youth, 
Where wisdom and not numbers should 

have weight, 
Seed-field of simpler manners, braver truth, 
Where shams should cease to dominate 
In household, church, and state ? 
Is this Atlantis ? This the unpoisoned soil, 
Sea-whelmed for ages and recovered late, 
Where parasitic greed no more should coil 
Round Freedom's stem to bend awry and 

blight 
What grew so fair, sole plant of love and 

light ? 
Who sit where once in crowned seclusion sate 
The long-proved athletes of debate 
Trained from their youth, as none thinks 

needful now ? 
Is this debating club where boys dispute, 
And wrangle o'er their stolen fruit, 
The Senate, erewhile cloister of the few, 
Where Clay once flashed and Webster's 

cloudy brow 
Brooded those bolts of thought that all the 

horizon knew ? 



Oh, as this pensive moonlight blurs my 

pines, 
Here while I sit and meditate these lines, 
To gray-green dreams of what they are by 

day, 
So would some light, not reason's sharp- 
edged ray, 
Trance me in moonshine as before the 

flight 
Of years had won me this unwelcome right 
To see things as they are, or shall be soon, 
In the frank prose of unassembling noon ! 



Back to my breast, ungrateful sigh ! 
Whoever fails, whoever errs, 
The penalty be ours, not hers ! 
The present still seems vulgar, seen too 
nigh; 



ODE FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1876 



373 



The golden age is still the age that 's past: 
I ask no drowsy opiate 
To diill my vision of that only state 
Founded on faith in man, and therefore 

sure to last. 
For, O my country, touched by thee, 
The gray hairs gather back their gold; 
Thy thought sets all my pulses free ; 
The heart refuses to be old; 
The love is all that I can see. 
Not to thy natal-day belong 
Time's prudent doubt or age's wrong, 
But gifts of gratitude and song: 
Unsummoned crowd the thankful words, 
As sap in spring-time floods the tree, 
Foreboding the return of birds, 
For all that thou hast been to me ! 



Flawless his heart and tempered to the 

core 
Who, beckoned by the forward-leaning 

wave, 
First left behind him the firm-footed shore, 
And, urged by every nerve of sail and 

oar, 
Steered for the Unknown which gods to 

mortals gave, 
Of thought and action the mysterious door, 
Bugbear of fools, a summons to the brave : 
Strength found he in the unsympathizing 

sun, 
And strange stars from beneath the horizon 

won, 
And the dumb ocean pitilessly grave: 
High-hearted surely he; 
"""But bolder they who first off-cast 
Their moorings from the habitable Past 
And ventured chartless on the sea 
Of storm-engendering Liberty: 
~For all earth's width of waters is a span, 
And their convulsed existence mere repose, 
Matched with the unstable heart of man, 
Shoreless in wants, mist - girt in all it 

knows, 
Open to every wind of sect or clan, 
And sudden-passionate in ebbs and flows. 



They steered by stars the elder shipmen 

knew, 
And laid their courses where the currents 

draw 



Of ancient wisdom channelled deep in law, 

The undaunted few 

Who changed the Old World for the New, 

And more devoutly prized 

Than all perfection theorized 

The more imperfect that had roots and 

grew. 
They founded deep and well, 
Those danger-chosen chiefs of men 
Who still believed in Heaven and Hell, 
Nor hoped to find a spell, 
In some fine flourish of a pen, 
To make a better man 
Than long-considering Nature will or can, 
Secure against his own mistakes, 
Content with what life gives or takes, 
And acting still on some fore-ordered plan, 
A cog of iron in an iron wheel, 
Too nicely poised to think or feel, 
Dumb motor in a clock-like commonweal. 
They wasted not their brain in schemes 
Of what man might be in some bubble- 
sphere, 
As if he must be other than he seems 
Because he was not what he should be 

here, 
Postponing Time's slow proof to petulant 

dreams : 
Yet herein they were great 
Beyond the incredulous lawgivers of yore, 
And wiser than the wisdom of the shelf, 
That they conceived a deeper-rooted state, 
Of hardier growth, alive from rind to core, 
By making man sole sponsor of himself. 



God of our fathers, Thou who wast, 

Art, and shalt be when those eye-wise who 

flout 
Thy secret presence shall be lost 
In the great light that dazzles them to 

doubt, 
We, sprung from loins of stalwart men 
Whose strength was in their trust 
That Thou wouldst make thy dwelling in 

their dust 
And walk with those a fellow-citizen 
Who build a city of the just, 
We, who believe Life's bases rest 
Beyond the probe of chemic test, 
Still, like our fathers, feel Thee near, 
Sure that, while lasts the immutable de- 
cree, 
The land to Human Nature dear 
Shall not be unbeloved of Thee. 



374 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



This title was given to the volume of poems 
collected and published in 1886 after Lowell's 
return to private life. He took occasion to 



glean after his earlier harvest and preserved 
in it several poems written before the publi- 
cation of Under the Willows. 



I. FRIENDSHIP 
AGASSIZ 

Come 
Dicesti egli ebbe ? non viv' egli ancora ? 
Non fiere gli occhi suoi lo dolce lome ? 

Lowell was in Florence when Agassiz died, 
and sent this poem home to Mr. Norton for 
publication. "His death," he says, "came 
home to me in a singular way, growing into 
my consciousness from day to day as if it 
were a graft new-set, that by degrees became 
part of my own wood and drew a greater 
share of my sap than belonged to it, as grafts 
sometimes will. I suppose that, unconsciously 
to myself, a great part of the ferment it pro- 
duced in me was owing to the deaths of my 
sister Anna [Mrs. Charles R. Lowell], of 

Mrs. , whom I knew as a child in my early 

manhood, and of my cousin Amory, who was 
inextricably bound up with the primal associa- 
tions of my life, associations which always have 
a singular sweetness for me. A very deep 
chord had been touched also at Florence by 
the sight of our old lodgings in the Casa Guidi, 
of the balcony Mabel used to run on, and the 
windows we used to look out at so long ago. 
I got sometimes into the mood I used to be 
in when I was always repeating to myself, 

' King Pandion he is dead ; 
All thy friends are lapt in lead,' — 

verses which seem to me desolately pathetic. 
At last I began to hum over bits of my poem 
in my head till it took complete possession of 
me and worked me up to a delicious state of 
excitement, all the more delicious as my brain 
(or at any rate the musical part of it) had 
been lying dormant so long. My old trick of 
seeing things with my eyes shut after I had 
gone to bed (I mean whimsical things utterly 
alien to the train of my thoughts — for ex- 
ample, a hospital ward with a long row of 
white, untenanted beds, and on the farthest 
a pile of those little wooden dolls with red- 
painted slippers) revived in full force. Ner- 
vous, horribly nervous, but happy for the 
first time (I mean consciously happy) since I 



came over here. And so by degrees my poem 
worked itself out. The parts came to me as I 
came awake, and I wrote them down in the 
morning. I had all my bricks — but the mor- 
tar would n't set, as the masons say. However, 
I got it into order at last. You will see there 
is a logical sequence if you look sharp. It 
was curious to me after it was done to see how 
fleshly it was. This impression of Agassiz had 
wormed itself into my consciousness, and with- 
out my knowing it had colored my whole poem. 
I could not help feeling how, if I had been 
writing of Emerson, for example, I should 
have been quite otherwise ideal. But there it 
is, and you can judge for yourself. I think 
there is some go in it somehow, but it is too 
near me yet to be judged fairly by me. It is 
old-fashioned, you see, but none the worse for 
that." The poem was dated February, 1874. 



I. 

The electric nerve, whose instantaneous 

thrill 
Makes next-door gossips of the antipodes, 
Confutes poor Hope's last fallacy of ease, — 
The distance that divided her from ill: 
Earth sentient seems again as when of old 

The horny foot of Pan 
Stamped, and the conscious horror ran 
Beneath men's feet through all her fibres 

cold: 
Space's blue walls are mined; we feel the 

throe 
From underground of our night-mantled 
foe : 

The flame-winged feet 
Of Trade's new Mercury, that dry-shod run 
Through briny abysses dreamless of the 
sun, 

Are mercilessly fleet, 
And at a bound annihilate 
Ocean's prerogative of short reprieve ; 

Surely ill news might wait, 
And man be patient of delay to grieve: 
Letters have sympathies 
And tell-tale faces that reveal, 



AGASSIZ 



375 



To senses finer than the eyes, 
Their errand's purport ere we break the 

seal; 
They wind a sorrow round with circum- 
stance 
To stay its feet, nor all unwarned displace 
The veil that darkened from our sidelong 
glance 

The inexorable face : 
But now Fate stuns as with a mace; 
The savage of the skies, that men have 
caught 
And some scant use of language 
taught, 

Tells only what he must, — 
The steel-cold fact in one laconic thrust. 



So thought I, as, with vague, mechanic 

eyes, 
I scanned the festering news we half de- 
spise 

Yet scramble for no less, 
And read of public scandal, private fraud, 
Crime flaunting scot-free while the mob 

applaud, 
Office made vile to bribe unworthiness, 

And all the unwholesome mess 
The Land of Honest Abraham serves of 
late 
To teach the Old World how to wait, 
When suddenly, 
As happens if the brain, from overweight 

Of blood, infect the eye, 
Three tiny words grew lurid as I read, 
And reeled commingling: Agassiz is dead. 
As when, beneath the street's familiar jar, 
An earthquake's alien omen rumbles far, 
Men listen and forebode, I hung my head, 

And strove the present to recall, 
As if the blow that stunned were yet to 
fall. 



Uprooted is our mountain oak, 
That promised long security of shade 
And brooding-place for many a winged 
thought; 
Not by Time's softly-cadenced stroke 
With pauses of relenting pity stayed, 
But ere a root seemed sapt, a bough de- 
cayed, 
From sudden ambush by the whirlwind 

caught 
And in his broad maturity betrayed ! 



Well might I, as of old, appeal to you, 

O mountains woods and streams, 
To help us mourn him, for ye loved him 

too; 
But simpler moods befit our modern 

themes, 
And no less perfect birth of nature can, 
Though they yearn tow'rd him, sympathize 

with man, 
Save as dumb fellow-prisoners through a 

wall; 
Answer ye rather to my call, 
Strong poets of a more unconscious day, 
When Nature spake nor sought nice rea- 
sons why, 
Too much for softer arts forgotten since 
That teach our forthright tongue to lisp 

and mince, 
And drown in music the heart's bitter cry ! 
Lead me some steps in your directer way, 
Teach me those words that strike a solid 

root 

Within the ears of men; 
Ye chiefly, virile both to think and feel, 
Deep-chested Chapman and firm-footed 

Ben, 
For he was masculine from head to heel. 
Nay, let himself stand undiminished by 
With those clear parts of him that will not 

die. 
Himself from out the recent dark I claim 
To hear, and, if I flatter him, to blame; 
To show himself, as still I seem to see, 
A mortal, built upon the antique plan, 
Brimful of lusty blood as ever ran, 
And taking life as simply as a tree ! 
To claim my foiled good-by let him ap- 
pear, 
Large-limbed and human as I saw him 

near, 
Loosed from the stiffening uniform of 

fame: 
And let me treat him largely: I should 

fear, 
(If with too prying lens I chanced to err, 
Mistaking catalogue for character,) 
His wise forefinger raised in smiling blame. 
Nor would I scant him with judicial 

breath 
And turn mere critic in an epitaph; 
I choose the wheat, incurious of the chaff 
That swells fame living, chokes it after 

death, 



376 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



And would but memorize the shining half 
Of his large nature that was turned to me : 
Fain had I joined with those that honored 

him 
With eyes that darkened because his were 

dim, 
And now been silent: but it might not be. 



In some the genius is a thing apart, 
A pillared hermit of the brain, 
Hoarding with incommunicable art 
Its intellectual gain; 
Man's web of circumstance and fate 
They from their perch of self observe, 
Indifferent as the figures on a slate 

Are to the planet's sun-swung curve 
Whose bright returns they calculate; 
Their nice adjustment, part to part, 
Were shaken from its serviceable mood 
By unpremeditated stirs of heart 

Or jar of human neighborhood: 
Some find their natural selves, and only 

then, 
In furloughs of divine escape from men, 
And when, by that brief ecstasy left bare, 

Driven by some instinct of desire, 
They wander worldward, 't is to blink and 

stare, 
Like wild things of the wood about a fire, 
Dazed by the social glow they cannot 
share ; 
His nature brooked no lonely lair, 
But basked and bourgeoned in copartnery, 
Companionship, and open-windowed glee: 
He knew, for he had tried, 
Those speculative heights that lure 
The unpractised foot, impatient of a guide, 

Tow'rd ether too attenuately pure 

For sweet unconscious breath, though dear 

to pride, 

But better loved the foothold sure 

Of paths that wind by old abodes of men 

Who hope at last the churchyard's peace 

secure, 
And follow time-worn rules, that them 

suffice, 
Learned from their sires, traditionally wise, 
Careful of honest custom's how and when; 
His mind, too brave to look on Truth 

askance, 
No more those habitudes of faith could 
share, 



But, tinged with sweetness of the old Swiss 

manse, 
Lingered around them still and fain would 

spare. 
Patient to spy a sullen egg for weeks, 
The enigma of creation to surprise, 
His truer instinct sought the life that 

speaks 
Without a mystery from kindly eyes; 
In no self-spun cocoon of prudence wound, 
He by the touch of men was best inspired, 
And caught his native greatness at re- 
bound 
From generosities itself had fired; 
Then how the heat through every fibre ran, 
Felt in the gathering presence of the man, 
While the apt word and gesture came un- 

bid! 
Virtues and faults it to one metal wrought, 

Fined all his blood to thought, 
And ran the molten man in all he said or 

did. 
All Tully's rules and all Quintilian's too 
He by the light of listening faces knew, 
And his rapt audience all unconscious lent 
Their own roused force to make him elo- 
quent; 
Persuasion fondled in his look and tone; 
Our speech (with strangers prudish) he 

could bring 
To find new charm in accents not her own; 
Her coy constraints and icy hindrances 
Melted upon his lips to natural ease, 
As a brook's fetters swell the dance of 

spring. 
Nor yet all sweetness : not in vain he wore, 
Nor in the sheath of ceremony, controlled 
By velvet courtesy or caution cold, 
That sword of honest anger prized of old, 

But, with two-handed wrath, 
If baseness or pretension crossed his path, 
Struck once nor needed to strike more. 



His magic was not far to seek, — 
He was so human ! Whether strong or 

weak, 
Far from his kind he neither sank nor 

soared, 
But sate an equal guest at every board: 
No beggar ever felt him condescend, 
No prince presume; for still himself he 

bare 
At manhood's simple level, and where'er 
He met a stranger, there he left a friend. 



AGASSIZ 



377 



How large an aspect ! nobly unsevere, 
With freshness round him of Olympian 

cheer, 
Like visits of those earthly gods he came; 
His look, wherever its good-fortune fell, 
Doubled the feast without a miracle, 
And on the hearthstone danced a happier 

flame; 
Philemon's crabbed vintage grew benign; 
Amphitryon's gold- juice humanized to wine. 



The garrulous memories 
Gather again from all their far-flown 

nooks, 
Singly at first, and then by twos and threes, 
Then in a throng innumerable, as the rooks 

Thicken their twilight files 
Tow'rd Tintern's gray repose of roofless 



Once more I see him at the table's head 
When Saturday her monthly banquet 

spread 

To scholars, poets, wits, 
All choice, some famous, loving things, not 

names, 
And so without a twinge at others' fames; 
Such company as wisest moods hefits, 
Yet with no pedant blindness to the worth 

Of undeliberate mirth, 
Natures benignly mixed of air and earth, 
Now with the stars and now with equal zest 
Tracing the eccentric orbit of a jest. 



I see in vision the warm-lighted hall, 
The living and the dead I see again, 
And but my chair is empty; 'mid them 

all 
'T is I that seem the dead: they all remain 
Immortal, changeless creatures of the brain: 
Wellnigh I doubt which world is real most, 
Of sense or spirit, to the truly sane ; 
In this abstraction it were light to deem 
Myself the figment of some stronger 

dream; 
They are the real things, and I the ghost 
That glide unhindered through the solid 

door, 
Vainly for recognition seek from chair to 

chair, 
And strive to speak and am but futile air, 
As; truly most of us are little more. 



Him most I see whom we most dearly miss, 

The latest parted thence, 
His features poised in genial armistice 
And armed neutrality of self-defence 
Beneath the forehead's walled preeminence, 
While Tyro, plucking facts with careless 

reach, 
Settles off-hand our human how and whence ; 
The long-trained veteran scarcely wincing 

hears 
The infallible strategy of volunteers 
Making through Nature's walls its easy 

breach, 
And seems to learn where he alone could 

teach. 
Ample and ruddy, the board's end he fills 
As he our fireside were, our light and heat, 
Centre where minds diverse and various 

skills 
Find their warm nook and stretch unham- 
pered feet; 
I see the firm benignity of face, 
Wide-smiling champaign, without tameness 

sweet, 
The mass Teutonic toned to Gallic grace, 
The eyes whose sunshine runs before the 

lips 
While Holmes's rockets curve their long 

ellipse, 
And burst in seeds of fire that burst 

again 

To drop in scintillating rain. 



There too the face half -rustic, half-divine, 

Self-poised, sagacious, freaked with hu- 
mor fine, 

Of him who taught us not to mow and 
mope 

About our fancied selves, but seek our 
scope 
In Nature's world and Man's, nor fade to 
hollow trope, 

Content with our New World and timely 
bold 

To challenge the o'ermastery of the Old ; 

Listening with eyes averse I see him sit 

Pricked with the cider of the Judge's wit 

(Ripe-hearted homebrew, fresh and fresh 
again), 

While the wise nose's firm-built aquiline 
Curves sharper to restrain 

The merriment whose most unruly moods 



378 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



Pass not the dumb laugh learned in listen- 
ing woods 

Of silence-shedding pine: 
Hard by is he whose art's consoling spell 
Hath given both worlds a whiff of 

asphodel, 
His look still vernal 'mid the wintry ring 
Of petals that remember, not foretell, 
The paler primrose of a second spring. 



And more there are: but other forms 

arise 
And y seen as clear, albeit with dimmer 

eyes: 
First he from sympathy still held apart 
By shrinking over-eagerness of heart, 
Cloud charged with searching fire, whose 

shadow's sweep 
Heightened mean things with sense of 

brooding ill, 
And steeped in doom familiar field and 

hill,— 
New England's poet, soul reserved and 

deep, 
November nature with a name of May, 
Whom high o'er Concord plains we laid 

to sleep, 
While the orchards mocked us in their 

white array 
And building robins wondered at our 

tears, 
Snatched in his prime, the shape august 
That should have stood unbent 'neath 

fourscore years, 

The noble head, the eyes of furtive trust, 

All gone to speechless dust. 

And he our passing guest, 

Shy nature, too, and stung with life's 

unrest, 
Whom we too briefly had but could not 

hold, 
Who brought ripe Oxford's culture to our 

board, 

The Past's incalculable hoard, 
Mellowed by scutcheoned panes in clois- 
ters old, 
Seclusions ivy-hushed, and pavements 

sweet 
With immemorial lisp of musing feet; 
Young head time-tonsured smoother than 

a friar's, 
Boy face, but grave with answerless 

desires, 
Poet in all that poets have of best, 



But foiled with riddles dark and cloudy 

aims, 

Who now hath found sure rest, 
Not by still Isis or historic Thames, 
Nor by the Charles he tried to love with 

me, 
But, not misplaced, by Arno's hallowed 

brim, 
Nor scorned by Santa Croce's neighboring 



Haply not mindless, wheresoe'er he be, 
Of violets that to-day I scattered over 
him; 

He, too, is there, 
After the good centurion fitly named, 
Whom learning dulled not, nor convention 

tamed, 
Shaking with burly mirth his hyacinthine 

hair, 
Our hearty Grecian of Homeric ways, 
Still found the surer friend where least he 
hoped the praise. 

6. 

Yea truly, as the sallowing years 
Fall from us faster, like frost-loosened 

leaves 
Pushed by the misty touch of shortening 

days, 
And that unwakened winter nears, 
'T is the void chair our surest guest 

receives, 
'T is lips long cold that give the warmest 

kiss, 
'T is the lost voice comes oftenest to our | 

ears; 
We count our rosary by the beads we miss : 

To me, at least, it seemeth so, 
An exile in the land once found divine, 

While my starved fire burns low, 
And homeless winds at the loose casement 

whine 
Shrill ditties of the snow-roofed Apen- 

nine. 



Now forth into the darkness all are gone, 
But memory, still unsated, follows on, 
Retracing step by step our homeward 

walk, 
With many a laugh among our serious 

talk, 
Across the bridge where, on the dimpling 

tide, 



AGASSIZ 



379 



The long red streamers from the windows 

glide, 

Or the dim western moon 
Rocks her skiff's image on the broad lagoon, 
And Boston shows a soft Venetian side 
In that Arcadian light when roof and tree, 
Hard prose by daylight, dream in Italy; 
Or haply in the sky's cold chambers wide 
Shivered the winter stars, while all below, 
As if an end were come of human ill, 
The world was wrapt in innocence of snow 
And the cast-iron bay was blind and still; 
These were our poetry; in him perhaps 
Science had barred the gate that lets in 

dream, 
And he would rather count the perch and 

bream 
Than with the current's idle fancy lapse; 
And yet he had the poet's open eye 
That takes a frank delight in all it sees, 
Nor was earth voiceless, nor the mystic sky, 
To him the life-long friend of fields and 

trees: 
Then came the prose of the suburban street, 
Its silence deepened by our echoing feet, 
And converse such as rambling hazard finds ; 
Then he who many cities knew and many 

minds, 
And men once world - noised, now mere 

Ossian forms 
Of misty memory, bade them live anew 
As when they shared earth's manifold de- 
light, 
In shape, in gait, in voice, in gesture true, 
And, with an accent heightening as he 

warms, 
Would stop forgetful of the shortening 

night, 
Drop my confining arm, and pour profuse 
Much worldly wisdom kept for others' use, 
Not for his own, for he was rash and free, 
His purse or knowledge all men's, like the 

sea. 
Still can I hear his voice's shrilling might 
(With pauses broken, while the fitful spark 
He blew more hotly rounded on the dark 
To hint his features with a Rembrandt 

light) 
Call Oken back, or Humboldt, or Lamarck, 
Or Cuvier's taller shade, and many more 
Whom he had seen, or knew from others' 

sight, 
And make them men to me as ne'er before : 
Not seldom, as the undeadened fibre stirred 
Of noble friendships knit beyond the sea, 



German or French thrust by the lagging 

word, 
For a good leash of mother-tongues had he. 
At last, arrived at where our paths divide, 
" Good night ! " and, ere the distance grew 

too wide, 
"Good night!" again; and now with 

cheated ear 
I half hear his who mine shall never hear. 



Sometimes it seemed as if New England 

air 
For his large lungs too parsimonious 

were, 
As if those empty rooms of dogma drear 
Where the ghost shivers of a faith austere 

Counting the horns o'er of the Beast, 
Still scaring those whose faith in it is 

least, 
As if those snaps o' th' moral atmosphere 
That sharpen all the needles of the East, 

Had been to him like death, 
Accustomed to draw Europe's freer 

breath 

In a more stable element; 
Nay, even our landscape, half the year 

morose, 
Our practical horizon grimly pent, 
Our air, sincere of ceremonious haze, 
Forcing hard outlines mercilessly close, 
Our social monotone of level days, 

Might make our best seem banish- 
ment; 

But it was nothing so; 

Haply his instinct might divine, 

Beneath our drift of puritanic snow, 

The marvel sensitive and fine 
Of sanguinaria over-rash to blow 
And trust its shyness to an air malign; 
Well might he prize truth's warranty 

and pledge 
In the grim outcrop of our granite edge, 
Or Hebrew fervor flashing forth at need 
In the gaunt sons of Calvin's iron breed, 
As prompt to give as skilled to win and 

keep; 
But, though such intuitions might not 

cheer, 
Yet life was good to him, and, there or 

here, 
With that sufficing joy, the day was never 

cheap; 
Thereto his mind was its own ample 

sphere, 



3 8o 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



And, like those buildings great that 

through the year 
Carry one temperature, his nature large 
Made its own climate, nor could any 

marge 
Traced by convention stay him from his 

bent: 
He had a habitude of mountain air; 
He brought wide outlook where he went, 

And could on sunny uplands dwell 
Of prospect sweeter than the pastures fair 
High-hung of viny Neufchatel; 
Nor, surely, did he miss 
Some pale, imaginary bliss 
Of earlier sights whose inner landscape still 
was Swiss. 



I cannot think he wished so soon to die 
With all his senses full of eager heat, 
And rosy years that stood expectant by 
To buckle the winged sandals on their 

feet, 
He that was friends with Earth, and all 

her sweet 
with both hands unsparingly: 
Truly this life is precious to the root, 
And good the feel of grass beneath the 

foot; 
To lie in buttercups and clover-bloom, 

Tenants in common with the bees, 
And watch the white clouds drift through 

gulfs of trees, 
Is better than long waiting in the tomb; 



t)nly once more to feel the coming spring 
As the birds feel it, when it bids them 
sing, 
Only once more to see the moon 
Through leaf -fringed abbey-arches of the 
elms 
Curve her mild sickle in the West 
Sweet with the breath of hay-cocks, were 

a boon 
Worth any promise of soothsayer realms 
Or casual hope of being elsewhere blest; 

To take December by the beard 
And crush the creaking snow with springy 

foot, 
While overhead the North's dumb 

streamers shoot, 
Till Winter fawn upon the cheek en- 
deared, 
Then the long evening-ends 



Lingered by cosy chimney-nooks, 
With high companionship of books 
Or slippered talk of friends 
And sweet habitual looks, 
Is better than to stop the ears with dust: 
Too soon the spectre comes to say, " Thou 
must ! " 



When toil-crooked hands are crost upon 
the breast, 
They comfort us with sense of rest; 
They must be glad to lie forever still; 
Their work is ended with their day; 
Another fills their room; 't is the World's 
ancient way, 
Whether for good or ill; 
But the deft spinners of the brain, 
Who love each added day and find it 
gain, 
Them overtakes the doom 
To snap the half-grown flower upon the 

loom 
(Trophy that was to be of life-long pain), 
The thread no other skill can ever knit 
again. 
'T was so with him, for he was glad 
to live, 
'T was doubly so, for he left work begun ; 
Could not this eagerness of Fate forgive 

Till all the allotted flax were spun ? 
It matters not ; for, go at night or noon, 
A friend, whene'er he dies, has died too 

soon, 
And, once we hear the hopeless He is 

dead, 
So far as flesh hath knowledge, all is 
said. 

VI 



I seem to see the black procession go: 
That crawling prose of death too well I 

know, 
The vulgar paraphrase of glorious woe ; 
I see it wind through that unsightly 

grove, 
Once beautiful, but long defaced 
With granite permanence of cockney 

taste 
And all those grim disfigurements we 

love : 
There, then, we leave him : Him ? such 

costly waste 
Nature rebels at : and it is not true 



TO HOLMES 



Of those most precious parts of him we 
knew: 
Could we be conscious but as dreamers be, 
'T were sweet to leave this shifting life 

of tents 
Sunk in the changeless calm of Deity; 
Nay, to be mingled with the elements, 
The fellow-servant of creative powers, 
Partaker in the solemn year's events, 
To share the work of busy -fingered 

hours, 
To be night's silent almoner of dew, 
To rise again in plants and breathe and 

grow, 
To stream as tides the ocean caverns 

through, 
Or with the rapture of great winds to 

blow 
About earth's shaken coignes, were not a 
fate 
To leave us all-disconsolate; 
Even endless slumber in the sweetening 
sod 
Of charitable earth 
That takes out all our mortal stains, 
And makes us cleanlier neighbors of the 
clod, 
Methinks were better worth 
Than the poor fruit of most men's wake- 
ful pains, 
The heart's insatiable ache: 
But such was not his faith, 
Nor mine : it may be he had trod 
Outside the plain old path of God thus 
spake, 
But God to him was very God, 
And not a visionary wraith 
Skulking in murky corners of the mind, 
And he was sure to be 
Somehow, somewhere, imperishable as He, 
Not with His essence mystically combined, 
As some high spirits long, but whole and 
free, 
A perfected and conscious Agassiz. 
And such I figure him : the wise of old 
Welcome and own him of their peaceful 
fold, 
Not truly with the guild enrolled 
Of him who seeking inward guessed 
Diviner riddles than the rest, 
And groping in the darks of thought 
Touched the Great Hand and knew it 

not; 
Rather he shares the daily light, 
From reason's charier fountains won, 



38i 



Of his great chief, the slow-paced Stagy- 
rite, 

And Cuvier clasps once more his long-lost 
son. 



The shape erect is prone: forever stilled 
The winning tongue ; the forehead's high- 
piled heap, 
A cairn which every science helped to 

build, 
Unvalued will its golden secrets keep: 
He knows at last if Life or Death be best: 
Wherever he be flown, whatever vest 
The being hath put on which lately here 
So many-friended was, so full of cheer 
To make men feel the Seeker's noble zest, 
We have not lost him all ; he is not gone 
To the dumb herd of them that wholly 

die; 
The beauty of his better self lives on 
In minds he touched with fire, in many an 

eye 
He trained to Truth's exact severity; 
He was a Teacher : why be grieved for 

him 
Whose living word still stimulates the air ? 
In endless file shall loving scholars come 
The glow of his transmitted touch to share, 
And trace his features with an eye less 

dim 
Than ours whose sense familiar wont 

makes numb. 



TO HOLMES 

ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY 

Dear Wendell, why need count the years 
Since first your genius made me thrill, 

If what moved then to smiles or tears, 
Or both contending, move me still ? 

What has the Calendar to do 

With poets? What Time's fruitless 
tooth 
With gay immortals such as you 

Whose years but emphasize your youth ? 

One air gave both their lease of breath ; 

The same paths lured our boyish feet; 
One earth will hold us safe in death 

With dust of saints and scholars sweet. 



382 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



Our legends from one source were drawn, 
I scarce distinguish yours from mine, 

And don't we make the Gentiles yawn 
With " You remembers ? " o'er our 
wine ! 

If I, with too senescent air, 

Invade your elder memory's pale, 

You snub me with a pitying <; Where 
Were you in the September Gale ? " 

Both stared entranced at Lafayette, 
Saw Jackson dubbed with LL. D. 

What Cambridge saw not strikes us yet 
As scarcely worth one's while to see. 

Ten years my senior, when my name 
In Harvard's entrance-book was writ, 

Her halls still echoed with the fame 
Of you, her poet and her wit. 

'T is fifty years from then to now: 
But your Last Leaf renews its green, 

Though, for the laurels on your brow 
(So thick they crowd), 't is hardly seen. 

The oriole's fledglings fifty times 
Have flown from our familiar elms; 

As many poets with their rhymes 
Oblivion's darkling dust o'er whelms. 

The birds are hushed, the poets gone 
Where no harsh critic's lash can reach, 

And still your winged brood sing on 
To all who love our English speech. 

Nay, let the foolish records be 

That make believe you 're seventy-five: 
You 're the old Wendell still to me, — 

And that 's the youngest man alive. 

The gray-blue eyes, I see them still, 
The gallant front with brown o'erhung, 

The shape alert, the wit at will, 

The phrase that stuck, but never stung. 

You keep your youth as yon Scotch firs, 
Whose gaunt line my horizon hems, 

Though twilight all the lowland blurs, 
Hold sunset in their ruddy stems. 

You with the elders ? Yes, 't is true, 

But in no sadly literal sense, 
With elders and coevals too, 

Whose verb admits no preterite tense. 



Master alike in speech and song 
Of fame's great antiseptic — Style, 

You with the classic few belong 

Who tempered wisdom with a smile. 

Outlive us all ! Who else like you 
Could sift the seedcorn from our chaff, 

And make us with the pen we knew 
Deathless at least in epitaph ? 



IN A COPY OF OMAR KHAYYAM 

These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs 

were bred, 
Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; 
The diver Omar plucked them from their 

bed, 
Fitzgerald strung them on an English 

thread. 

Fit rosary for a queen, in shape and hue, 
When Contemplation tells her pensive beads 
Of mortal thoughts, forever old and new. 
Fit for a queen ? Why, surely then for 
you! 

The moral ? Where Doubt's eddies toss 

and twirl 
Faith's slender shallop till her footing reel, 
Plunge : if you find not peace beneath the 

whirl, 
Groping, you may like Omar grasp a pearl. 



ON RECEIVING A COPY OF 
MR. AUSTIN DOBSON'S "OLD 
WORLD IDYLLS" 



At length arrived, your book I take 
To read in for the author's sake; 
Too gray for new sensations grown, 
Can charm to Art or Nature known 
This torpor from my senses shake ? 

Hush ! my parched ears what runnels 

slake ? 
Is a thrush gurgling from the brake ? 
Has Spring, on all the breezes blown, 
At length arrived ? 

Long may you live such songs to make, 
And I to listen while you wake, 



BANKSIDE 



383 



With skill of late disused, each tone 
Of the Lesboum barbiton, 
At mastery, through long finger-ache, 
At length arrived. 



As I read on, what changes steal 
O'er me and through, from head to heel ? 
A rapier thrusts coat-skirt aside, 
My rough Tweeds bloom to silken pride, — 
Who was it laughed? Your hand, Dick 
Steele ! 

Down vistas long of dipt charmille 
Watteau as Pierrot leads the reel; 
Tabor and pipe the dancers guide 
As I read on. 

While in and out the verses wheel 
The wind-caught robes trim feet reveal, 
Lithe ankles that to music glide, 
But chastely and by chance descried; 
Art ? Nature ? Which do I most feel 
As I read on ? 



TO C. F. BRADFORD 

ON THE GIFT OF A MEERSCHAUM PIPE 

The pipe came safe, and welcome too, 

As anything must be from you; 

A meerschaum pure, 't would float as light 

As she the girls call Amphitrite. 

Mixture divine of foam and clay, 

From both it stole the best away: 

Its foam is such as crowns the glow 

Of beakers brimmed by Veuve Clicquot; 

Its clay is but congested lymph 

Jove chose to make some choicer nymph ; 

And here combined, — why, this must be 

The birth of some enchanted sea, 

Shaped to immortal form, the type 

And very Venus of a pipe. 

When high I heap it with the weed 
From Lethe wharf, whose potent seed 
Nicotia, big from Bacchus, bore 
And cast upon Virginia's shore, 
I '11 think, — So fill the fairer bowl 
And wise alembic of thy soul, 
With herbs far-sought that shall distil, 
Not fumes to slacken thought and will, 
But bracing essences that nerve 
To wait, to dare, to strive, to serve. 



When curls the smoke in eddies soft, 
And hangs a shifting dream aloft, 
That gives and takes, though chance-de- 
signed, 
The impress of the dreamer's mind, 
I '11 think, — So let the vapors bred 
By Passion, in the heart or head, 
Pass off and upward into space, 
Waving farewells of tenderest grace, 
Remembered in some happier time, 
To blend their beauty with my rhyme. 

While slowly o'er its candid bowl 
The color deepens (as the soul 
That burns in mortals leaves its trace 
Of bale or beauty on the face), 
I '11 think, — So let the essence rare 
Of years consuming make me fair; 
So, 'gainst the ills of life profuse, 
Steep me in some narcotic juice; 
And if my soul must part with all 
That whiteness which we greenness call, 
Smooth back, O Fortune, half thy frown, 
And make me beautifully brown ! 

Dream-forger, I refill thy cup 
With reverie's wasteful pittance up, 
And while the fire burns slow away, 
Hiding itself in ashes gray, 
I '11 think, — As inward Youth retreats, 
Compelled to spare his wasting heats, 
When Life's Ash- Wednesday comes about,, 
And my head 's gray with fires burnt out, 
While stays one spark to light the eye, 
With the last flash of memory, 
'T will leap to welcome C. F. B., 
Who sent my favorite pipe to me. 



BANKSIDE 

(HOME OF EDMUND QUINCY) 

Dedham, May 21, 1877 

Edmund Quiney was eleven years the senior 
of Lowell, but their common labors in the 
early days of the anti-slavery movement, and 
their congeniality of temper and wit, made 
them very intimate friends. 



I christened you in happier days, before 
These gray forebodings on my brow were 



384 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



You are still lovely in your new-leaved 

green ; 
The brimming river soothes his grassy 

shore ; 
The bridge is there; the rock with lichens 

hoar; 
And the same shadows on the water lean, 
Outlasting us. How many graves between 
That day and this ! How many shadows 

more 
Darken my heart, their substance from 

these eyes 
Hidden forever ! So our world is made 
Of life and death commingled; and the 

sighs 
Outweigh the smiles, in equal balance laid: 
What compensation ? None, save that the 

Allwise 
So schools us to love things that cannot 

fade. 



Thank God, he saw you last in pomp of 
May, 

Ere any leaf had felt the year's regret; 

Your latest image in his memory set 

Was fair as when your landscape's peaceful 
sway 

Charmed dearer eyes with his to make 
delay 

On Hope's long prospect, — as if They for- 
get 

The happy, They, the unspeakable Three, 
whose debt, 

Like the hawk's shadow, blots our brightest 
day: 

Better it is that ye should look so fair, 

Slopes that he loved, and ever-murmuring 
pines 

That make a music out of silent air, 

And bloom-heaped orchard-trees in pros- 
perous lines; 

In you the heart some sweeter hints divines, 

And wiser, than in winter's dull despair. 



Old Friend, farewell ! Your kindly door 

again 
I enter, but the master's hand in mine 
No more clasps welcome, and the temperate 

wine, 
That cheered our long nights, other lips 

must stain: 
All is unchanged, but I expect in vain 
The face alert, the manners free and fine, 



The seventy years borne lightly as the pine 
Wears its first down of snow in green dis- 
dain: 
Much did he, and much well; yet most of 

all 
I prized his skill in leisure and the ease 
Of a life flowing full without a plan ; 
For most are idly busy; him I call 
Thrice fortunate who knew himself to 

please, 
Learned in those arts that make a gentle- 
man. 



Nor deem he lived unto himself alone; 
His was the public spirit of his sire, 
And in those eyes, soft with domestic fire, 
A quenchless light of fiercer temper shone 
What time about the world our shame was 

blown 
On every wind; his soul would not con- 
spire 
With selfish men to soothe the mob's de- 
sire, 
Veiling with garlands Moloch's bloody 

stone ; 
The high-bred instincts of a better day 
Ruled in his blood, when to be citizen 
Rang Roman yet, and a Free People's sway 
Was not the exchequer of impoverished 

men, 
Nor statesmanship with loaded votes to 

play, 
Nor public office a tramps' boosing-ken. 



JOSEPH WINLOCK 

DIED JUNE II, 1875 

Mr. Winlock was at the head of the Harvard 
Astronomical Observatory at the time of his 
death. 

Shy soul and stalwart, man of patient will 
Through years one hair's-breadth on our 

Dark to gain, 
Who, from the stars he studied not in vain, 
Had learned their secret to be strong and 

still, 
Careless of fames that earth's tin trum- 
pets fill; 
Born under Leo, broad of build and brain, 
While others slept, he watched in that 

hushed fane 
Of Science, only witness of his skill: 



WITH AN ARMCHAIR 



&S 



Sudden as falls a shooting-star lie fell, 
But inextinguishable his luminous trace 
In mind and heart of all that knew him 

well. 
Happy man's doom ! To him the Fates 

were known 
Of orbs dim hovering on the skirts of 



Unprescient, through God's mercy, of his 
own ! 



SONNET 

TO FANNY ALEXANDER 

The daughter of an American portrait 
painter who spent his life in Italy, and herself 
known through her sympathetic and delicate 
portraiture of Italian peasant life, especially 
in her Roadside Songs of Tuscany. The poem 
is dated at Florence in 1873. 

Unconscious as the sunshine, simply sweet 
And generous as that, thou dost not close 
Thyself in art, as life were but a rose 
To rumple bee-like with luxurious feet; 
Thy higher mind therein finds sure retreat, 
But not from care of common hopes and 

woes: 
Thee the dark chamber, thee the unfriended, 

knows, 
Although no babbling crowds thy praise 

repeat: 
Consummate artist, who life's landscape 

bleak 
Hast brimmed with sun to many a clouded 

eye, 
Touched to a brighter hue the beggar's 

cheek, 
Hung over orphaned lives a gracious sky, 
And traced for eyes, that else would vainly 

seek, 
Fair pictures of an angel drawing nigh ! 



JEFFRIES WYMAN 

DIED SEPTEMBER 4, 1 874 

An associate of Lowell in Cambridge, and 
eminent as a man of science in the field of 
comparative anatomy. 

The wisest man could ask no more of Fate 
Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, 



Safe from the Many, honored by the Few; 
To count as naught in World, or Church, 

or State, 
But inwardly in secret to be great; 
To feel mysterious Nature ever new; 
To touch, if not to grasp, her endless clue, 
And learn by each discovery how to wait. 
He widened knowledge and escaped the 

praise ; 
He wisely taught, because more wise to 

learn; 
He toiled for Science, not to draw men's 

gaze, 
But for her lore of self-denial stern. 
That such a man could spring from our 

decays 
Fans the soul's nobler faith until it burn. 



TO A FRIEND 

WHO GAVE ME A GROUP OF WEEDS AND 
GRASSES, AFTER A DRAWING OF DURER 

True as the sun's own work, but more 

refined, 
It tells of love behind the artist's eye, 
Of sweet companionships with earth and 

sky, 
And summers stored, the sunshine of the 

mind. 
What peace ! Sure, ere you breathe, the 

fickle wind 
Will break its truce and bend that grass- 
plume high, 
Scarcely yet quiet from the gilded fly 
That flits a more luxurious perch to find. 
Thanks for a pleasure that can never pall, 
A serene moment, deftly caught and kept 
To make immortal summer on my wall. 
Had he who drew such gladness ever 

wept ? 
Ask rather could he else have seen at all, 
Or grown in Nature's mysteries an adept ? 



WITH AN ARMCHAIR 
1. 

About the oak that framed this chair, of 
old 

The seasons danced their round; delighted 
wings 

Brought music to its boughs; shy wood- 
land things 



3 86 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



Shared its broad roof, 'neath whose green 

glooms grown bold, 
Lovers, more shy than they, their secret 

told; 
The resurrection of a thousand springs 
Swelled in its veins, and dim imaginings 
Teased them, perchance, of life more mani- 
fold. 
Such shall it know when its proud arms 

enclose 
My Lady Goshawk, musing here at rest, 
Careless of him who into exile goes, 
Yet, while his gift by those fair limbs is 

prest, 
Through some fine sympathy of nature 

knows 
That, seas between us, she is still his guest. 



Yet sometimes, let me dream, the con- 
scious wood 
A momentary vision may renew 
Of him who counts it treasure that he 

knew, 
Though but in passing, such a priceless 

good, 
And, like an elder brother, felt his mood 
Uplifted by the spell that kept her true, 
Amid her lightsome compeers, to the few 
That wear the crown of serious woman- 
hood: 
Were he so happy, think ~f him as one 
Who in the Louvre or Pi^ti feels his soul 
Rapt by some dead face which, till then 

unseen, 
Moves like a memory, and, till life outrun, 
Is vexed with vague misgiving past con- 
trol, 
Of nameless loss and thwarted might-have- 
been. 



E. G. de R. 

Why should I seek her spell to decompose 
Or to its source each rill of influence trace 
That feeds the brimming river of her 

grace ? 
The petals numbered but degrade to prose 
Summer's triumphant poem of the rose: 
Enough for me to watch the wavering 

chase, 
Like wind o'er grass, of moods across her 

face, 
Fairest in motion, fairer in repose. 



Steeped in her sunshine, let me, while I 

may, 
Partake the bounty : ample 't is for me 
That her mirth cheats my temples of their 

gray, 
Her charm makes years long spent seem 

yet to be. 
Wit, goodness, grace, swift flash from 

grave to gay, — 
All these are good, but better far is she. 



BON VOYAGE 

Ship, blest to bear such freight across the 

blue, 
May stormless stars control thy horoscope; 
In keel and hull, in every spar and rope, 
Be night and day to thy dear office true ! 
Ocean, men's path and their divider too, 
No fairer shrine of memory and hope 
To the underworld adown thy westering 

slope 
E'er vanished, or whom such regrets pur- 
sue: 
Smooth all thy surges as when Jove to 

Crete 
Swam with less costly burthen, and pre- 
pare 
A pathway meet for her home-coming 

soon 
With golden undulations such as greet 
The printless summer-sandals of the moon 
And tempt the Nautilus his cruise to dare ! 



TO WHITTIER 

ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY 

New England's poet, rich in love as 



Her hills and valleys praise thee, her swift 

brooks 
Dance in thy verse; to her grave sylvan 

nooks 
Thy steps allure us, which the wood-thrush 

hears 
As maids their lovers', and no treason 

fears; 
Through thee her Merrimacs and Agio- 

chooks 
And many a name uncouth win gracious 

looks, 
Sweetly familiar to both Englands' ears : 



ON PLANTING A TREE AT INVERARAY 



387 



Peaceful by birthright as a virgin lake, 
The lily's anchorage, which no eyes behold 
Save those of stars, yet for thy brother's 

sake 
That lay in bonds, thou blewst a blast as 

bold 
As that wherewith the heart of Roland 

brake, 
Far heard across the New World and the 

Old. 



ON AN AUTUMN SKETCH OF 
H. G. WILD 

Thanks to the artist, ever on my wall 
The sunset stays : that hill in glory rolled, 
Those trees and clouds in crimson and in 

gold, 
Burn on, nor cool when evening's shadows 

fall. 
Not round these splendors Midnight wraps 

her pall; 
• These leaves the flush of Autumn's vintage 

hold 
In Winter's spite, nor can the Northwind 

bold 
Deface my chapel's western window small: 
On one, ah me ! October struck his frost, 
But not repaid him with those Tyrian 

hues; 
His naked boughs but tell him what is lost, 
And parting comforts of the sun refuse: 
His heaven is bare, — ah, were its hollow 

crost 
Even with a cloud whose light were yet to 



TO MISS D. T. 



ON HER GIVING ME A DRAWING OF 
LITTLE STREET ARABS 

Miss Dorothy Tennant afterward married 
Henry M. Stanley, the African explorer. 

As, cleansed of Tiber's and Oblivion's 

slime, 
Glow Farnesina's vaults with shapes again 
That dreamed some exiled artist from his 

pain 
Back to his Athens and the Muse's clime, 
So these world - orphaned waifs of Want 

and Crime, 



Purged by Art's absolution from the stain 
Of the polluting city-flood, regain 
Ideal grace secure from taint of time. 
An Attic frieze you give, a pictured song; 
For as with words the poet paints, for 

you 
The happy pencil at its labor sings, 
Stealing his privilege, nor does him wrong, 
Beneath the false discovering the true, 
And Beauty's best in unregarded things. 



WITH A COPY OF AUCASSIN 
AND NICOLETE 

Leaves fit to have been poor Juliet's 

cradle-rhyme, 
With gladness of a heart long quenched in 

mould 
They vibrate still, a nest not yet grown 

cold 
From its fledged burthen. The numb 

hand of Time 
Vainly his glass turns; here is endless 

prime; 
Here lips their roses keep and locks their 

gold; 
Here Love in pristine innocency bold 
Speaks what our grosser conscience makes 

a crime. 
Because it tells the dream that all have 

known 
Once in their lives, and to life's end the 

few; 
Because its seeds o'er Memory's desert 

blown 
Spring up in heartsease such as Eden 

knew; 
Because it hath a beauty all its own, 
Dear Friend, I plucked this herb of grace 

for you. 



ON PLANTING A TREE AT IN- 
VERARAY 

Who does his duty is a question 
Too complex to be solved by me, 

But he, I venture the suggestion, 
Does part of his that plants a tree. 

For after he is dead and buried, 
And epitaphed, and well forgot, 

Nay, even his shade by Charon ferried 
To — let us not inquire to what, 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



His deed, its author long outliving, 
By Nature's mother-care increased, 

Shall stand, his verdant almoner, giving 
A kindly dole to man and beast. 

The wayfarer, at noon reposing, 
Shall bless its shadow on the grass, 

Or sheep beneath it huddle, dozing 
Until the thundergust o'erpass. 

The owl, belated in his plundering, 
Shall here await the friendly night, 

Blinking whene'er he wakes, and wondering 
What fool it was invented light. 

Hither the busy birds shall flutter, 
With the light timber for their nests, 

And, pausing from their labor, utter 
The morning sunshine in their breasts. 

What though his memory shall have van- 
ished, 

Since the good deed he did survives ? 
It is not wholly to be banished 

Thus to be part of many lives. 

Grow, then, my foster-child, and strengthen, 
Bough over bough, a murmurous pile, 

And, as your stately stem shall lengthen, 
So may the statelier of Argyll ! 



AN EPISTLE TO GEORGE 
WILLIAM CURTIS 

"De prodome, 
Des qu'il s'atorne a grant bonte 
Ja n'iert tot dit ne tot conte, 
Que leingue ne puet pas retraire 
Tant d'enor com prodom set faire." 

Ckestien de Teoies, 
Li Romans dou Chevalier au Lyon, 784-788. 

1874 

Curtis, whose Wit, with Fancy arm in arm, 
Masks half its muscle in its skill to charm, 
And who so gently can the Wrong expose 
As sometimes to make converts, never foes, 
Or only such as good men must expect, 
Knaves sore with conscience of their own 

defect, 
I come with mild remonstrance. Ere I 

start, 
A kindlier errand interrupts my heart, 
And I must utter, though it vex your ears, 



The love, the honor, felt so many years. 
Curtis, skilled equally with voice and pen 
To stir the hearts or mould the minds of 

men, — 
That voice whose music, for I 've heard you 

sing 
Sweet as Casella, can with passion ring, 
That pen whose rapid ease ne'er trips with 

haste, 
Nor scrapes nor sputters, pointed with good 

taste, 
First Steele's, then Goldsmith's, next it 

came to you, 
Whom Thackeray rated best of all our 

crew, — 
Had letters kept you, every wreath were 

yours ; 
Had the World tempted, all its chariest 

doors 
Had swung on flattered hinges to admit 
Such high-bred manners, such good-natured 

wit; 
At courts, in senates, who so fit to serve ? 
And both invited, but you would not swerve, 
All meaner prizes waiving that you might 
In civic duty spend your heat and light, 
Unpaid, untrammelled, with a sweet disdain 
Refusing posts men grovel to attain. 
Good Man all own you; what is left me, 

then, 
To heighten praise with but Good Citizen ? 

But why this praise to make you blush and 

stare, 
And give a backache to your Easy-Chair? 
Old Crestien rightly says no language can 
Express the worth of a true Gentleman, 
And I agree; but other thoughts deride 
My first intent, and lure my pen aside. 
Thinking of you, I see my firelight glow 
On other faces, loved from long ago, 
Dear to us both, and all these loves com- 
bine 
With this I send and crowd in every line; 
Fortune with me was in such generous mood 
That all my friends were yours, and all 

were good; 
Three generations come when one I call, 
And the fair grandame, youngest of them 

all, 
In her own Florida who found and sips 
The fount that fled from Ponce's longing 

lips. 
How bright they rise and wreathe my 
hearthstone round, 



AN EPISTLE TO GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 



389 



Divine my thoughts, reply without a sound, 
And with them many a shape that memory 

sees, 
As dear as they, but crowned with aureoles 

these ! 
What wonder if, with protest in my thought, 
Arrived, I find 't was only love I brought ? 
I came with protest; Memory barred the 

road 
Till I repaid you half the debt I owed. 

No, 't was not to bring laurels that I came, 
Nor would you wish it, daily seeing fame, 
(Or our cheap substitute, unknown of yore,) 
Dumped like a load of coal at every door, 
Mime and hetsera getting equal weight 
With him whose toils heroic saved the State. 
But praise can harm not who so calmly 

met 
Slander's worst word, nor treasured up the 

debt, 
Knowing, what all experience serves to 

show, 
No mud can soil us but the mud we throw. 
You have heard harsher voices and more 

loud, 
As all must, not sworn liegemen of the 

crowd, 
And far aloof your silent mind could keep 
As when, in heavens with winter-midnight 

deep, 
The perfect moon hangs thoughtful, nor 

can know 
What hounds her lucent calm drives mad 

below. 

But to my business, while you rub your 
eyes 

And wonder how you ever thought me wise. 

Dear friend and old, they say you shake 
your head 

And wish some bitter words of mine un- 
said: 

I wish they might be, — there we are 
agreed; 

I hate to speak, still more what makes the 
need; 

But I must utter what the voice within 

Dictates, for acquiescence dumb were sin; 

I blurt ungrateful truths, if so they be, 

That none may need to say them after me. 

'T were my felicity could I attain 

The temperate zeal that balances your 
brain ; 

But nature still o'erleaps reflection's plan, 



And one must do his service as he can. 
Think you it were not pleasanter to speak 
Smooth words that leave unnushed the 

brow and cheek ? 
To sit, well-dined, with cynic smile, unseen 
In private box, spectator of the scene 
Where men the comedy of life rehearse, 
Idly to judge which better and which 

worse 
Each hireling actor spoiled his worthless 

part? 
Were it not sweeter with a careless heart, 
In happy commune with the untainted 

brooks, 
To dream all day, or, walled with silent 

books, 
To hear nor heed the World's unmeaning 

noise, 
Safe in my fortress stored with lifelong 

joys? 

I love too well the pleasures of retreat 
Safe from the crowd and cloistered from 

the street; 
The fire that whispers its domestic joy, 
Flickering on walls that knew me still a 

boy, 
And knew my saintly father; the full days, 
Not careworn from the world's soul-squan- 
dering ways, 
Calm days that loiter with snow -silent 

tread, 
Nor break my commune with the undying 

dead; 
Truants of Time, to-morrow like to-day, 
That come unbid, and claimless glide away 
By shelves that sun them in the indulgent 

Past, 
Where Spanish castles, even, were built to 

last, 
Where saint and sage their silent vigil keep, 
And wrong hath ceased or sung itself to 

sleep. 
Dear were my walks, too, gathering fra- 
grant store 
Of Mother Nature's simple-minded lore: 
I learned all weather-signs of day or night; 
No bird but I could name him by his flight, 
No distant tree but by his shape was 

known, 
Or, near at hand, by leaf or bark alone. 
This learning won by loving looks I hived 
As sweeter lore than all from books derived. 
I know the charm of hillside, field, and 
wood, 



39° 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



Of lake and stream, and the sky's downy 

brood, 
Of roads sequestered rimmed with sallow 

sod, 
But friends with hardhack, aster, golden- 
rod, 
Or succory keeping summer long its trust 
Of heaven-blue fleckless from the eddying 

dust: 
These were my earliest friends, and latest 

too, 
Still unestranged, whatever fate may do. 
For years I had these treasures, knew their 

worth, 
Estate most real man can have on earth. 
I sank too deep in this soft-stuffed repose 
That hears but rumors of earth's wrongs 

and woes; 
Too well these Capuas could my muscles 

waste, 
Not void of toils, but toils of choice and 

taste; 
These still had kept me could I but have 

quelled 
The Puritan drop that in my veins rebelled. 
But there were times when silent were my 

books 
As jailers are, and gave me sullen looks, 
When verses palled, and even the woodland 

path, 
By innocent contrast, fed my heart with 

wrath, 
And I must twist my little gift of words 
Into a scourge of rough and knotted cords 
Unmusical, that whistle as they swing 
To leave on shameless backs their purple 

sting. 

How slow Time comes ! Gone, who so swift 

as he? 
Add but a year, 't is half a century 
Since the slave's stifled moaning broke my 

sleep, 
Heard 'gainst my will in that seclusion 

deep, 
Haply heard louder for the silence there, 
And so my fancied safeguard made my 

snare. 
After that moan had sharpened to a cry, 
And a cloud, hand-broad then, heaped all 

our sky 
With its stored vengeance, and such thun- 
ders stirred 
As heaven's and earth's remotest chambers 

heard, 



I looked to see an ampler atmosphere 
By that electric passion-gust blown clear. 
I looked for this ; consider what I see — 
But I forbear, 't would please nor you nor 

me 
To check the items in the bitter list 
Of all I counted on and all I mist. 
Only three instances I choose from all, 
And each enough to stir a pigeon's gall: 
Office a fund for ballot-brokers made 
To pay the drudges of their gainful trade; 
Our cities taught what conquered cities 

By sediles chosen that they might safely 
steal; 

And gold, however got, a title fair 

To such respect as only gold can bear. 

I seem to see this; how shall I gainsay 

What all our journals tell me every day ? 

Poured our young martyrs their high- 
hearted blood 

That we might trample to congenial mud 

The soil with such a legacy sublimed ? 

Methinks an angry scorn is here well- 
timed: 

Where find retreat ? How keep reproach 
at bay ? 

Where'er I turn some scandal fouls the 
way. 

Dear friend, if any man I wished to please, 
'T were surely you whose humor's honied 

ease 
Flows flecked with gold of thought, whose 

generous mind 
Sees Paradise regained by all mankind, 
Whose brave example still to vanward 

shines, 
Checks the retreat, and spurs our lagging 

lines. 
Was I too bitter? Who his phrase can 

choose 
That sees the life-blood of his dearest 

ooze ? 
I loved my Country so as only they 
Who love a mother fit to die for may; 
I loved her old renown, her stainless 

fame, — 
What better proof than that I loathed her 

shame ? 
That many blamed me could not irk me 

long, 
But, if you doubted, must I not be wrong ? 
'T is not for me to answer: this I know, 
That man or race so prosperously low 



AN EPISTLE TO GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 



39 1 



Sunk in success that wrath they cannot 

feel, 
Shall taste the spurn of parting Fortune's 

heel ; 
For never land long lease of empire won 
Whose sons sate silent when base deeds 

were done. 

POSTSCRIPT, 1887 

Curtis, so wrote I thirteen years ago, 
Tost it unfinished by, and left it so ; 
Found lately, I have pieced it out, or tried, 
Since time for callid juncture was denied. 
Some of the verses pleased me, it is true, 
And still were pertinent, — those honoring 

you. 
These now I offer : take them, if you 

will, 
Like the old hand-grasp, when at Shady 

HiU 
We met, or Staten Island, in the days 
When life was its own spur, nor needed 

praise. 
If once you thought me rash, no longer 

fear ; 
Past my next milestone waits my seven- 
tieth year. 
I mount no longer when the trumpets 

call ; 
My battle-harness idles on the wall, 
The spider's castle, camping - ground of 

dust, 
Not without dints, and all in front, I trust. 
Shivering sometimes it calls me as it hears 
Afar the charge's tramp and clash of 

spears ; 
But 't is such murmur only as might be 
The sea-shell's lost tradition of the sea, 
That makes me muse and wonder Where ? 

and When ? 
While from my cliff I watch the waves of 

men 
That climb to break midway their seeming 

gain, 
And think it triumph if they shake their 

chain. 
Little I ask of Fate ; will she refuse 
Some days of reconcilement with the 

Muse? 
I take my reed again and blow it free 
Of dusty silence, murmuring, " Sing to 

me ! " 
And, as its stops my curious touch retries, 
The stir of earlier instincts I surprise, — 



Instincts, if less imperious, yet more 

strong, 
And happy in the toil that ends with song. 

Home am I come : not, as I hoped might 

be, 
To the old haunts, too full of ghosts for me, 
But to the olden dreams that time en- 
dears, 
And the loved books that younger grow 

with years ; 
To country rambles, timing with my tread 
Some happier verse that carols in my 

head, 
Yet all with sense of something vainly 

mist, 
Of something lost, but when I never wist. 
How empty seems to me the populous 

street, 
One figure gone I daily loved to meet, — 
The clear, sweet singer with the crown of 

snow 
Not whiter than the thoughts that housed 

below ! 
And, ah, what absence feel I at my side, 
Like Dante when he missed his laurelled 

guide, 
What sense of diminution in the air 
Once so inspiring, Emerson not there ! 
But life is sweet, though all that makes it 

sweet 
Lessen like sound of friends' departing 

feet, 
And Death is beautiful as feet of friend 
Coming with welcome at our journey's 

end; 
For me Fate gave, whate'er she else de- 
nied, 
A nature sloping to the southern side ; 
I thank her for it, though when clouds 

arise 
Such natures double-darken gloomy skies. 
I muse upon the margin of the sea, 
Our common pathway to the new To Be, 
Watching the sails, that lessen more and 

more, 
Of good and beautiful embarked before ; 
With bits of wreck I patch the boat shall 

bear 
Me to that unexhausted Otherwhere, 
Whose friendly-peopled shore I sometimes 

see, 
By soft mirage uplifted, beckon me, 
Nor sadly hear, as lower sinks the sun, 
My moorings to the past snap one by one. 



39 2 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



II. SENTIMENT 
ENDYMION 

A MYSTICAL COMMENT ON TITIAN'S 
" SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE " 



My day began not till the twilight fell, 
And, lo, in ether from heaven's sweetest 

well, 
The New Moon swam divinely isolate 
In maiden silence, she that makes my fate 
Haply not knowing it, or only so 
As I the secrets of my sheep may know ; 
Nor ask I more, entirely blest if she, 
In letting me adore, ennoble me 
To height of what the Gods meant mak- 
ing man, 
As only she and her best beauty can. 
Mine be the love that in itself can find 
Seed of white thoughts, the lilies of the 

mind, 
Seed of that glad surrender of the will 
That finds in service self's true purpose 

still ; 
Love that in outward fairness sees the tent 
Pitched for an inmate far more excellent; 
Love with a light irradiate to the core, 
Lit at her lamp, but fed from inborn 

store ; 
Love thrice-requited with the single joy 
Of an immaculate vision naught could 

cloy, 
Dearer because, so high beyond my scope, 
My life grew rich with her, unbribed by 

hope 
Of other guerdon save to think she knew 
One grateful votary paid her all her due ; 
Happy if she, high-radiant there, resigned 
To his sure trust her image in his mind. 
O fairer even than Peace is when she 

comes 
Hushing War's tumult, and retreating 

drums 
Fade to a murmur like the sough of bees 
Hidden among the noon-stilled linden-trees, 
Bringer of quiet, thou that canst allay 
The dust and din and travail of the day, 
Strewer of Silence, Giver of the dew 
That doth our pastures and our souls re- 
new, 
Still dwell remote, still on thy shoreless sea 



Float unattained in silent empery, 

Still light my thoughts, nor listen to a 

prayer 
Would make thee less imperishably fair ! 



Can, then, my twofold nature find content 
In vain conceits of airy blandishment ? 
Ask I no more ? Since yesterday I task 
My storm-strewn thoughts to tell me what 

I ask: 
Faint premonitions of mutation strange 
Steal o'er my perfect orb, and, with the 

change, 
Myself am changed; the shadow of my 

earth 
Darkens the disk of that celestial worth 
Which only yesterday could still suffice 
Upwards to waft my thoughts in sacrifice; 
My heightened fancy with its touches 

warm 
Moulds to a woman's that ideal form; 
Nor yet a woman's wholly, but divine 
With awe her purer essence bred in mine. 
Was it long brooding on their own surmise, 
Which, of the eyes engendered, fools the 

eyes, 
Or have I leen through that translucent air 
A Presence shaped in its seclusions bare, 
My Goddess looking on me from above 
As look our russet maidens when they love, 
But high-uplifted o'er our human heat 
And passion-paths too rough for her pearl 

feet? 

Slowly the Shape took outline as I gazed 
At her full-orbed or crescent, till, bedazed 
With wonder-working light that subtly 

wrought 
My brain to its own substance, steeping 

thought 
In trances such as poppies give, I saw 
Things shut from vision by sight's sober 

law, 
Amorphous, changeful, but defined at last 
Into the peerless Shape mine eyes hold 

fast. 
This, too, at first I worshipt: soon, like 

wine, 
Her eyes, in mine poured, frenzy-philtred 

mine; 
Passion put Worship's priestly raiment on 
And to the woman knelt, the Goddess gone. 
Was I, then, more than mortal made ? or 

she 






ENDYMION 



393 



Less than divine that she might mate with 

me? 
If mortal merely, could my nature cope 
With such o'ermastery of maddening 

hope ? 
If Goddess, could she feel the blissful woe 
That women in their self-surrender know ? 



Long she abode aloof there in her heaven, 
Far as the grape-bunch of the Pleiad seven 
Beyond my madness' utmost leap; but 

here 
Mine eyes have feigned of late her rapture 

near, 
Moulded of mind-mist that broad day dis- 
pels, 
Here in these shadowy woods and brook- 
lulled dells. 

Have no heaven-habitants e'er felt a void 
In hearts sublimed with ichor unalloyed ? 
E'er longed to mingle with a mortal fate 
Intense with pathos of its briefer date ? 
Could she partake, and live, our human 

stains ? 
Even with the thought there tingles through 

my veins 
Sense of unwarned renewal; I, the dead, 
Receive and house again the ardor fled, 
As once Alcestis; to the ruddy brim 
Feel masculine virtue flooding every limb, 
And life, like Spring returning, brings the 

key 
That sets my senses from their winter free, 
Dancing like naked fauns too glad for 

shame. 
Her passion, purified to palest flame, 
Can it thus kindle ? Is her purpose this ? 
I will not argue, lest I lose a bliss 
That makes me dream Tithonus' fortune 

mine, 
(Or what of it was palpably divine 
Ere came the fruitlessly immortal gift;) 
I cannot curb my hope's imperious drift 
That wings with fire my dull mortality; 
Though fancy-forged, 't is all I feel or see. 



My Goddess sinks ; round Latmos' darken- 
ing brow 
Trembles the parting of her presence now, 
Faint as the perfume left upon the grass 
By her limbs' pressure or her feet that 
pass 



By me conjectured, but conjectured so 
As things I touch far fainter substance 

show. 
Was it mine eyes' imposture I have seen 
Flit with the moonbeams on from shade to 

sheen 
Through the wood-openings ? Nay, I see 

her now 
Out of her heaven new-lighted, from her 

brow 
The hair breeze-scattered, like loose mists 

that blow 
Across her crescent, goldening as they go 
High-kirtled for the chase, and what was 

shown, 
Of maiden rondure, like the rose half- 
blown. 
If dream, turn real ! If a vision, stay ! 
Take mortal shape, my philtre's spell obey I 
If hags compel thee from thy secret sky 
With gruesome incantations, why not I, 
Whose only magic is that I distil 
A potion, blent of passion, thought, and 

will, 
Deeper in reach, in force of fate more rich, 
Than e'er was juice wrung by Thessalian 

witch 
From moon-enchanted herbs, — a potion 

brewed 
Of my best life in each diviner mood ? 
Myself the elixir am, myself the bowl 
Seething and mantling with my soul of soul. 
Taste and be humanized: what though the 

cup, 
With thy lips frenzied, shatter ? Drink it 

up ! 
If but these arms may clasp, o'erquited so, 
My world, thy heaven, all life means I 

shall know. 



Sure she hath heard my prayer and granted 

half, 
As Gods do who at mortal madness laugh. 
Yet if life's solid things illusion seem, 
Why may not substance wear the mask of 

dream? 
In sleep she comes ; she visits me in dreams, 
And, as her image in a thousand streams, 
So in my veins, that her obey, she sees, 
Floating and flaming there, her images 
Bear to my little world's remotest zone 
Glad messages of her, and her alone. 
With silence-sandalled Sleep she comes to 

me, 



394 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



(But softer-footed, sweeter-browed, than 

she,) 
In motion gracious as a seagull's wing, 
And all her bright limbs, moving, seem to 

sing. 
Let me believe so, then, if so I may 
With the night's bounty feed my beggared 

day. 
In dreams I see her lay the goddess down 
With bow and quiver, and her crescent- 
crown 
Flicker and fade away to dull eclipse 
As down to mine she deigns her longed-for 

lips; 
And as her neck my happy arms enfold, 
Flooded and lustred with her loosened gold, 
She whispers words each sweeter than a 

kiss: 
Then, wakened with the shock of sudden 

bliss, 
My arms are empty, my awakener fled, 
And, silent in the silent sky o'erhead, 
But coldly as on ice -plated snow, she 

gleams, 
Herself the mother and the child of dreams. 



Gone is the time when phantasms could 



My quest phantasmal and bring cheated 

ease; 
When, if she glorified my dreams, I felt 
Through all my limbs a change immortal 

melt 
At touch of hers illuminate with soul. 
Not long could I be stilled with Fancy's 

dole; 
Too soon the mortal mixture in me caught 
Red fire from her celestial flame, and 

fought 
For tyrannous control in all my veins: 
My fool's prayer was accepted; what re- 
mains ? 
Or was it some eidolon merely, sent 
By her who rules the shades in banishment, 
To mock me with her semblance ? Were 

it thus, 
How 'scape I shame, whose will was trai- 
torous ? 
What shall compensate an ideal dimmed ? 
How blanch again my statue virgin-limbed, 
Soiled with the incense-smoke her chosen 

priest 
Poured more profusely as within decreased 
The fire unearthly, fed with coals from far 



Within the soul's shrine ? Could my fallen 

star 
Be set in heaven again by prayers and tears 
And quenchless sacrifice of all my years, 
How would the victim to the flamen leap, 
And life for life's redemption paid hold 

cheap ! 

But what resource when she herself de- 
scends 

From her blue throne, and o'er her vassal 
bends 

That shape thrice-deified by love, those 
eyes 

Wherein the Lethe of all others lies ? 

When my white queen of heaven's remote- 
ness tires, 

Herself against her other self conspires, 

Takes woman's nature, walks in mortal 
ways, 

And finds in my remorse her beauty's 
praise ? 

Yet all would I renounce to dream again 

The dream in dreams fulfilled that made 
my pain, 

My noble pain that heightened all my 
years 

With crowns to win and prowess-breeding 
tears; 

Nay, would that dream renounce once more 
to see 

Her from her sky there looking down at 
me ! 



Goddess, reclimb thy heaven, and be once 

more 
An inaccessible splendor to adore, 
A faith, a hope of such transcendent worth 
As bred ennobling discontent with earth; 
Give back the longing, back the elated 

mood 
That, fed with thee, spurned every meaner 

good; 
Give even the spur of impotent despair 
That, without hope, still bade aspire and 

dare; 
Give back the need to worship, that still 

pours 
Down to the soul the virtue it adores ! 

Nay, brightest and most beautiful, deem 

naught 
These frantic words, the reckless wind of 

thought: 



THE BLACK PREACHER 



395 



Still stoop, still grant, — I live but in thy 
will; 

Be what thou wilt, but be a woman still ! 

Vainly I cried, nor could myself believe 

That what I prayed for I would fain re- 
ceive. 

My moon is set; my vision set with her; 

No more can worship vain my pulses stir. 

Goddess Triform, I own thy triple spell, 

My heaven's queen, — queen, too, of my 
earth and hell ! 



THE BLACK PREACHER 

A BRETON LEGEND 

At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay, 
They show you a church, or rather the 

gray 
Ribs of a dead one, left there to bleach 
With the wreck lying near on the crest of 

the beach, 
Roofless and splintered with thunder-stone, 
'Mid lichen-blurred gravestones all alone ; 
'T is the kind of ruin strange sights to 

see 
That may have their teaching for you and 



Something like this, then, my guide had to 

tell, 
Perched on a saint cracked across when he 

fell; 
But since I might chance give his meaning 

a wrench, 
He talking his patois and I English-French, 
I '11 put what lie told me, preserving the 

tone, 
In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, 

half my own. 

An abbey-church stood here, once on a 

time, 
Built as a death-bed atonement for crime: 
'T was for somebody's sins, I know not 

whose ; 
But sinners are plenty, and you can choose. 
Though a cloister now of the dusk-winged 

bat, 
'T was rich enough once, and the brothers 

grew fat, 
Looser in girdle and purpler in jowl, 
Singing good rest to the founder's lost soul. 



But one day came Northmen, and lithe 

tongues of fire 
Lapped up the chapter-house, licked off 

the spire, 
And left all a rubbish-heap, black and 

dreary, 
Where only the wind sings miserere. 

No priest has kneeled since at the altar's 

foot, 
Whose crannies are searched by the night- 
shade's root, 
Nor sound of service is ever heard, 
Except from throat of the unclean bird, 
Hooting to unassoiled shapes as they pass 
In midnights unholy his witches' mass, 
Or shouting " Ho ! ho ! " from the belfry 

high 
As the Devil's sabbath-train whirls by. 

But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls, 
Through these arches dishallowed the 

organ rolls, 
Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work, 
The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists 

mirk, 
The skeleton windows are traced anew 
On the baleful flicker of corpse-lights blue, 
And the ghosts must come, so the legend 

saith, 
To a preaching of Reverend Doctor Death. 

Abbots, monks, barons, and ladies fair 
Hear the dull summons and gather there : 
No rustle of silk now, no clink of mail, 
Nor ever a one greets his church-mate 

pale; 
No knight whispers love in the chatelaine's 

ear, 
His next-door neighbor this five-hundred 

year; 
No monk has a sleek benedicite 
For the great lord shadowy now as he; 
Nor needeth any to hold his breath, 
Lest he lose the least word of Doctor 

Death. 

He chooses his text in the Book Divine, 
Tenth verse of the Preacher in chapter 

nine : — 
" ' Whatsoever thy hand shall find thee to 

do, 
That do with thy whole might, or thou 

shalt rue; 
For no man is wealthy, or wise, or brave, 



39 6 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



In that quencher of might-be's and would- 

be's, the grave.' 
Bid by the Bridegroom, 'To-morrow,' ye 

said, 
And To-morrow was digging a trench for 

your bed; 
Ye said, ' God can wait ; let us finish our 

wine ; ' 
Ye had wearied Him, fools, and that last 

knock was mine ! " 

But I can't pretend to give you the ser- 
mon, 
Or say if the tongue were French, Latin, 

or German; 
Whatever he preached in, I give you my 

word 
The meaning was easy to all that heard; 
Famous preachers there have been and be, 
But never was one so convincing as he ; 
So blunt was never a begging friar, 
No Jesuit's tongue so barbed with fire, 
Cameronian never, nor Methodist, 
Wrung gall out of Scripture with such a 
twist. 

And would you know who his hearers must 

be? 
I tell you just what my guide told me: 
Excellent teaching men have, day and 

night, 
From two earnest friars, a black and a 

white, 
The Dominican Death and the Carmelite 

Life; 
And between these two there is never 

strife, 
For each has his separate office and station, 
And each his own work in the congrega- 
tion; 
Whoso to the white brother deafens his 

ears, 
And cannot be wrought on by blessings or 

tears, 
Awake in his coffin must wait and wait, 
In that blackness of darkness that means 

too late, 
And come once a year, when the ghost-bell 

tolls, 
As till Doomsday it shall on the eve of 

All-Souls, 
To hear Doctor Death, whose words smart 

with the brine 
Of the Preacher, the tenth verse of chap- 
ter nine. 



ARCADIA REDIVIVA 

I, walking the familiar street, 

While a crammed horse -car jingled 
through it, 
Was lifted from my prosy feet 

And in Arcadia ere I knew it. 

Fresh sward for gravel soothed my tread, 
And shepherd's pipes my ear delighted; 

The riddle may be lightly read: 
I met two lovers newly plighted. 

They murmured by in happy care, 
New plans for paradise devising, 

Just as the moon, with pensive stare, 
O'er Mistress Craigie's pines was rising. 

Astarte, known nigh threescore years, 
Me to no speechless rapture urges; 

Them in Elysium she enspheres, 

Queen, from of old, of thaumaturges. 

The railings put forth bud and bloom, 
The house-fronts all with myrtles twine 
them, 
And light-winged Loves in every room 
Make nests, and then with kisses line 
them. 

O sweetness of untasted life ! 

O dream, its own supreme fulfilment ! 
O hours with all illusion rife, 

As ere the heart divined what ill meant ! 

" Et ego" sighed I to myself, 

And strove some vain regrets to bridle, 
" Though now laid dusty on the shelf, 

Was hero once of such an idyl ! 

" An idyl ever newly sweet, 

Although since Adam's day recited, 

Whose measures time them to Love's feet, 
Whose sense is every ill requited." 

Maiden, if I may counsel, drain 

Each drop of this enchanted season, 

For even our honeymoons must wane, 
Convicted of green cheese by Reason. 

And none will seem so safe from change, 
Nor in such skies benignant hover, 

As this, beneath whose witchery strange 
You tread on rose-leaves with your lover. 



THE NEST 



397 



The glass unfilled all tastes can fit, 
As round its brim Conjecture dances; 

For not Mephisto's self hath wit 
To draw such vintages as Fancy's. 

When our pulse beats its minor key, 

When play-time halves and school-time 
doubles, 
Age fills the cup with serious tea, 

Which once Dame Clicquot starred with 
bubbles. 

" Fie, Mr. Graybeard! Is this wise ? 

Is this the moral of a poet, 
Who, when the plant of Eden dies, 

Is privileged once more to sow it ? 

" That herb of clay-disdaining root, 
From stars secreting what it feeds on, 

Is burnt-out passion's slag and soot 
Fit soil to strew its dainty seeds on ? 

" Pray, why, if in Arcadia once, 

Need one so soon forget the way 
there ? 
Or why, once there, be such a dunce 

As not contentedly to stay there ? " 

Dear child, 't was but a sorry jest, 
And from my heart I hate the cynic 

Who makes the Book of Life a nest 
For comments staler than rabbinic. 

If Love his simple spell but keep, 

Life with ideal eyes to flatter, 
The Grail itself were crockery cheap 

To Every-day's communion-platter. 

One Darby is to me well known, 

Who, as the hearth between them blazes, 

Sees the old moonlight shine on Joan, 
And float her youthward in its hazes. 

He rubs his spectacles, he stares, — 

'T is the same face that witched him 
early ! 

He gropes for his remaining hairs, — 
Is this a fleece that feels so curly ? 

" Good heavens ! but now 't was winter 

And I of years had more than plenty; 
The almanac 's a fool ! 'T is May ! 
Hang family Bibles ! I am twenty ! 



"Come, Joan, your arm; we'll walk the 
room — 

The lane, I mean — do you remember ? 
How confident the roses bloom, 

As if it ne'er could be December ! 

" Nor more it shall, while in your eyes 
My heart its summer heat recovers, 

And you, howe'er your mirror lies, 
Find your old beauty in your lover's." 



THE NEST 

MAY 

When oaken woods with buds are pink, 
And new-come birds each morning sing, 

When fickle May on Summer's brink 
Pauses, and knows not which to fling, 

Whether fresh bud and bloom again, 

Or hoar-frost silvering hill and plain, 

Then from the honeysuckle gray 
The oriole with experienced quest 

Twitches the fibrous bark away, 
The cordage of his hammock-nest, 

Cheering his labor with a note 

Rich as the orange of his throat. 

High o'er the loud and dusty road 
The soft gray cup in safety swings, 

To brim ere August with its load 

Of downy breasts and throbbing wings, 

O'er which the friendly elm-tree heaves 

An emerald roof with sculptured eaves. 

Below, the noisy World drags by 
In the old way, because it must, 

The bride with heartbreak in her eye, 
The mourner following hated dust: 

Thy duty, winged flame of Spring, 

Is but to love, and fly, and sing. 

Oh, happy life, to soar and sway 
Above the life by mortals led, 

Singing the merry months away, 
Master, not slave of daily bread, 

And, when the Autumn comes, to flee 

Wherever sunshine beckons thee ! 

PALINODE — DECEMBER 

Like some lorn abbey now, the wood 
Stands roofless in the bitter air; 



398 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



In ruins on its floor is strewed 

The carven foliage quaint and rare, 
And homeless winds complain along 
The columned choir once thrilled with song. 

And thou, dear nest, whence joy and praise 
The thankful oriole used to pour, 

Swing'st empty while the north winds chase 
Their snowy swarms from Labrador: 

But, loyal to the happy past, 

I love thee still for what thou wast. 

Ah, when the Summer graces flee 

From other nests more dear than thou, 

And, where June crowded once, I see 
Only bare trunk and disleaved bough; 

When springs of life that gleamed and 
gushed 

Run chilled, and slower, and are hushed ; 

When our own branches, naked long, 
The vacant nests of Spring betray, 

Nurseries of passion, love, and song 
That vanished as our year grew gray; 

When Life drones o'er a tale twice told 

O'er embers pleading with the cold, — 

I '11 trust, that, like the birds of Spring, 
Our good goes not without repair, 

But only flies to soar and sing 
Far off in some diviner air, 

Where we shall find it in the calms 

Of that fair garden 'neath the palms. 



A YOUTHFUL EXPERIMENT IN 
ENGLISH HEXAMETERS 

IMPRESSIONS OF HOMER 

Sometimes come pauses of calm, when the 
rapt bard, holding his heart back, 

Over his deep mind muses, as when o'er 
awe-stricken ocean 

Poises a heapt cloud luridly, ripening the 
gale and the thunder; 

Slow rolls onward the verse with a long 
swell heaving and swinging, 

Seeming to wait till, gradually wid'ning 
from far-off horizons, 

Piling the deeps up, heaping the glad- 
hearted surges before it, 

Gathers the thought as a strong wind 
darkening and cresting the tumult. 

Then every pause, every heave, each trough 
in the waves, has its meaning; 



Full-sailed, forth like a tall ship steadies 

the theme, and around it, 
Leaping beside it in glad strength, running 

in wild glee beyond it, 
Harmonies billow exulting and floating the 

soul where it lists them, 
Swaying the listener's fantasy hither and 

thither like driftweed. 



BIRTHDAY VERSES 

WRITTEN IN A CHILD'S ALBUM 

'T WAS sung of old in hut and hall 
How once a king in evil hour 
Hung musing o'er his castle wall, 
And, lost in idle dreams, let fall 
Into the sea his ring of power. 

Then, let him sorrow as he might, 
And pledge his daughter and his throne 
To who restored the jewel bright, 
The broken spell would ne'er unite; 
The grim old ocean held its own. 

Those awful powers on man that wait, 
On man, the beggar or the king, 
To hovel bare or hall of state 
A magic ring that masters fate 
With each succeeding birthday bring. 

Therein are set four jewels rare: 
Pearl winter, summer's ruby blaze, 
Spring's emerald, and, than all more fair, 
Fall's pensive opal, doomed to bear 
A heart of fire bedreamed with haze. 

To him the simple spell who knows 
The spirits of the ring to sway, 
Fresh power with every sunrise flows, 
And royal pursuivants are those 
That fly his mandates to obey. 

But he that with a slackened will 
Dreams of things past or things to be, 
From him the charm is slipping still, 
And drops, ere he suspect the ill, 
Into the inexorable sea. 

ESTRANGEMENT 

The path from me to you that led, 

Untrodden long, with grass is grown, 
Mute carpet that his lieges spread 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE 



399 



Before the Prince Oblivion 
When he goes visiting the dead. 

And who are they but who forget ? 

You, who my coming could surmise 
Ere any hint of me as yet 

Warned other ears and other eyes, 
See the path blurred without regret. 

But when I trace its windings sweet 
With saddened steps, at every spot 

That feels the memory in my feet, 
Each grass-blade turns forget-me-not, 

Where murmuring bees your name repeat. 

PHGEBE 

This poem was sent from London September 
4, 1881, to Mr. Gilder for The Century. Its 
first form was in the main the same as this, 
but before the poem was published several 
changes and omissions were made. The inter- 
esting evolution of the final form may be seen 
in detail in the Notes and Illustrations. 

Ere pales in Heaven the morning star, 
A bird, the loneliest of its kind, 

Hears Dawn's faint footfall from afar 
While all its mates are dumb and blind. 

It is a wee sad-colored thing, 

As shy and secret as a maid, 
That, ere in choir the robins sing, 

Pipes its own name like one afraid. 

It seems pain-prompted to repeat 

The story of some ancient ill, 
But Phoebe ! Phoebe I sadly sweet 

Is all it says, and then is still. 

It calls and listens. Earth and sky, 
Hushed by the pathos of its fate, 

Listen : no whisper of reply 

Comes from its doom-dissevered mate. 

Phoebe ! it calls and calls again, 

And Ovid, could he but have heard, 

Had hung a legendary pain 

About the memory of the bird ; 

A pain articulate so long, 

In penance of some mouldered crime 
Whose ghost still flies the Furies' thong 

Down the waste solitudes of time. 



Waif of the young World's wonder-hour, 
When gods found mortal maidens fair, 

And will malign was joined with power 
Love's kindly laws to overbear, 

Like Progne, did it feel the stress 
And coil of the prevailing words 

Close round its being, and compress 
Man's ampler nature to a bird's ? 

One only memory left of all 

The motley crowd of vanished scenes, 
Hers, and vain impulse to recall 

By repetition what it means. 

Phoebe ! is all it has to say 

In plaintive cadence o'er and o'er, 

Like children that have lost their way, 
And know their names, but nothing more. 

Is it a type, since Nature's Lyre 
Vibrates to every note in man, 

Of that insatiable desire, 

Meant to be so since life began ? 

I, in strange lands at gray of dawn, 

Wakeful, have heard that fruitless plaint 

Through Memory's chambers deep with- 
drawn 
Renew its iterations faint. 

So nigh ! yet from remotest years 
It summons back its magic, rife 

With longings unappeased, and tears 
Drawn from the very source of life. 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE 

How was I worthy so divine a loss, 

Deepening my midnights, kindling all 
my morns ? 
Why waste such precious wood to make my 
cross, 
Such far-sought roses for my crown of 
thorns ? 

And when she came, how earned I such a 
gift ? 
Why spend on me, a poor earth-delving 
mole, 
The fireside sweetnesses, the heavenward 
lift, 
The hourly mercy, of a woman's soul ? 



4-00 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



Ah, did we know to give her all her right, 
What wonders even in our poor clay 
were done ! 
It is not Woman leaves us to our night, 
But our brute earth that grovels from 
her sun. 

Our nobler cultured fields and gracious 
domes 
We whirl too oft from her who still 
shines on 
To light in vain our caves and clefts, the 
homes 
Of night-bircj. instincts pained till she be 
gone. 

Still must this body starve our souls with 
shade ; 
But when Death makes us what we were 
before, 
Then shall her sunshine all our depths 
invade, 
And not a shadow stain heaven's crystal 
floor. 

THE RECALL 

Come back before the birds are flown, 
Before the leaves desert the tree, 
And, through the lonely alleys blown, 
Whisper their vain regrets to me 
Who drive before a blast more rude, 
The plaything of my gusty mood, 
In vain pursuing and pursued ! 

Nay, come although the boughs be bare, 
Though snowflakes fledge the summer's 

nest, 
And in some far Ausonian air 
The thrush, your minstrel, warm his breast. 
Come, sunshine's treasurer, and bring 
To doubting flowers their faith in spring, 
To birds and me the need to sing ! 



ABSENCE 

Sleep is Death's image, — poets tell us so ; 
But Absence is the bitter self of Death, 
And, you away, Life's lips their red forego, 
Parched in an air unfreshened by your 
breath. 

Light of those eyes that made the light of 
mine, 



Where shine you ? On what happier fields 

and flowers ? 
Heaven's lamps renew their lustre less 

divine, 
But only serve to count my darkened hours. 

If with your presence went your image too, 
That brain-born ghost my path would never 

cross 
Which meets me now where'er I once met 

you, 
Then vanishes, to multiply my loss. 



MONNA LISA 

She gave me all that woman can, 
Nor her soul's nunnery forego, 
A confidence that man to mai> 
Without remorse can never show. 

Rare art, that can the sense refine 
Till not a pulse rebellious stirs, 
And, since she never can be mine, 
Makes it seem sweeter to be hers ! 



THE OPTIMIST 

Turbid from London's noise and smoke, 
Here I find air and quiet too: 
Air filtered through the beech and oak, 
Quiet by nothing harsher broke 
Than wood-dove's meditative coo. 

The Truce of God is here ; the breeze 
Sighs as men sigh relieved from care, 
Or tilts as lightly in the trees 
As might a robin: all is ease, 
With pledge of ampler ease to spare. 

Time, leaning on his scythe, forgets 
To turn the hour-glass in his hand, 
And all life's petty cares and frets, 
Its teasing hopes and weak regrets, 
Are still as that oblivious sand. 

Repose fills all the generous space 
Of undulant plain; the rook and crow 
Hush ; 't is as if a silent grace, 
By Nature murmured, calmed the face 
Of Heaven above and Earth below. 

From past and future toils I rest, 
One Sabbath pacifies my year; 



THE PROTEST 



401 



I am the halcyon, this my nest; 

And all is safely for the best 

While the World 's there and I am here. 

So I turn tory for the nonce, 
And think the radical a bore, 
Who cannot see, thick-witted dunce, 
That what was good for people once 
Must be as good forevermore. 

Sun, sink no deeper down the sky; 
Earth, never change this summer mood; 
Breeze, loiter thus forever by, 
Stir the dead leaf or let it lie; 
Since I am happy, all is good. 



ON BURNING SOME OLD 
LETTERS 

With what odorous woods and spices 
Spared for royal sacrifices, 
With what costly gums seld-seen, 
Hoarded to embalm a queen, 
With what frankincense and myrrh, 
Burn these precious parts of her, 
Full of life and light and sweetness 
As a summer day's completeness, 
Joy of sun and song of bird 
Running wild in every word, 
Full of all the superhuman 
Grace and winsomeness of woman? 

O'er these leaves her wrist has slid, 
Thrilled with veins where fire is hid 
'Neath the skin's pellucid veil, 
Like the opal's passion pale ; 
This her breath has sweetened ; this 
Still seems trembling with the kiss 
She half-ventured on my name, 
Brow and cheek and throat aflame; 
Over all caressing lies 
Sunshine left there by her eyes; 
From them all an effluence rare 
With her nearness fills the air, 
Till the murmur I half -hear 
Of her light feet drawing near. 

Rarest woods were coarse and rough, 
Sweetest spice not sweet enough, 
Too impure all earthly fire 
For this sacred funeral-pyre ; 
These rich relics must suffice 
For their own dear sacrifice. 



Seek we first an altar fit 
For such victims laid on it: 
It shall be this slab brought home 
In old happy days from Rome, — 
Lazuli, once blest to line 
Dian's inmost cell and shrine. 
Gently now I lay them there, 
Pure as Dian's forehead bare, 
Yet suffused with warmer hue, 
Such as only Latmos knew. 

Fire I gather from the sun 
In a virgin lens : 't is done ! 
Mount the flames, red, yellow, blue, 
As her moods were shining through, 
Of the moment's impulse born, — 
Moods of sweetness, playful scorn, 
Half defiance, half surrender, 
More than cruel, more than tender, 
Flouts, caresses, sunshine, shade, 
Gracious doublings of a maid 
Infinite in guileless art, 
Playing hide-seek with her heart. 

On the altar now, alas, 
There they lie a crinkling mass, 
Writhing still, as if with grief 
Went the life from every leaf; 
Then (heart-breaking palimpsest !) 
Vanishing ere wholly guessed, 
Suddenly some lines flash back, 
Traced in lightning on the black, 
And confess, till now denied, 
All the fire they strove to hide. 
What they told me, sacred trust, 
Stays to glorify my dust, 
There to burn through dust and damp 
Like a mage's deathless lamp, 
While an atom of this frame 
Lasts to feed the dainty flame. 

All is ashes now, but they 

In my soul are laid away, 

And their radiance round me hovers 

Soft as moonlight over lovers, 

Shutting her and me alone 

In dream-Edens of our own; 

First of lovers to invent 

Love, and teach men what it meant. 



THE PROTEST 

I could not bear to see those eyes 
On all with wasteful largess shine, 



4-02 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



And that delight of welcome rise 
Like sunshine strained through amber wine, 
But that a glow from deeper skies, 
From conscious fountains more divine, 
Is (is it ?) mine. 

Be beautiful to all mankind, 
As Nature fashioned thee to be; 
'T would anger me did all not find 
The sweet perfection that 's in thee: 
Yet keep one charm of charms behind, — 
Nay, thou 'rt so rich, keep two or three 
For (is it ?) me ! 

THE PETITION 

Oh, tell me less or tell me more, 
Soft eyes with mystery at the core, 
That always seem to meet my own 
Frankly as pansies fully grown, 
Yet waver still 'tween no and yes I 

So swift to cavil and deny, 
Then parley with concessions shy, 
Dear eyes, that make their youth be mine 
And through my inmost shadows shine, 
Oh, tell me more or tell me less ! 



FACT OR FANCY? 

In town I hear, scarce wakened yet, 
My neighbor's clock behind the wall 

Record the day's increasing debt, 
And Cuckoo I Cuckoo ! faintly call. 

Our senses run in deepening grooves, 
Thrown out of which they lose their tact, 

And consciousness with effort moves 
From habit past to present fact. 

So, in the country waked to-day, 
I hear, unwitting of the change, 

A cuckoo's throb from far away 

Begin to strike, nor think it strange. 

The sound creates its wonted frame : 
My bed at home, the songster hid 

Behind the wainscoting, — all came 
As long association bid. 

Then, half aroused, ere yet Sleep's mist 
From the mind's uplands furl away, 

To the familiar sound I list, 

Disputed for by Night and Day. 



I count to learn how late it is, 

Until, arrived at thirty-four, 
I question, " What strange world is this 

Whose lavish hours would make ine 
poor ? " 

Cuckoo ! Cuckoo I Still on it went, 
With hints of mockery in its toi 

How could such hoards of time be spent 
By one poor mortal's wit alone ? 

I have it ! Grant, ye kindly Powers, 
I from this spot may never stir, 

If only these uncounted hours 

May pass, and seem too short, with Her ! 

But who She is, her form and face, 
These to the world of dream belong; 

She moves through fancy's visioned space, 
Unbodied, like the cuckoo's song. 

AGRO-DOLCE 

One kiss from all others prevents me, 

And sets all my pulses astir, 
And burns on my lips and torments me: 

'T is the kiss that I fain would give her. 

One kiss for all others requites me, 

Although it is never to be, 
And sweetens my dreams and invites me: 

'T is the kiss that she dare not give me. 

Ah, could it be mine, it were sweeter 
Than honey bees garner in dream, 

Though its bliss on my lips were fleeter 
Than a swallow's dip to the stream. 

And yet, thus denied, it can never 
In the prose of life vanish away; 

O'er my lips it must hover forever, 
The sunshine and shade of my day. 



THE BROKEN TRYST 

Walking alone where we walked together, 
When June was breezy and blue, 

I watch in the gray autumnal weather 
The leaves fall inconstant as you. 

If a dead leaf startle behind me, 
I think 't is your garment's hem, 

And, oh, where no memory could find me, 
Might I whirl away with them ! 



PAOLO TO FRANCESCA 



403 



CASA SIN ALMA 

RECUERDO DE MADRID 

Silencioso por la puerta 

Voy de su casa desierta 

Do siempre feliz entre", 

Y la enduentro en vano abierta 

Cual la boca de una muerta 

Despues que el alma se fue. 

A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

FOR THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL CHILDREN OF 
THE CHURCH OF THE DISCIPLES 

The Church of the Disciples in Boston was 
under the ministration of the Reverend James 
Freeman Clarke. 

" What means this glory round our feet," 
The Magi mused, "more bright than 
morn ? " 

And voices chanted clear and sweet, 
" To-day the Prince of Peace is born ! " 

"What means that star," the Shepherds 
said, 
" That brightens through the rocky 
glen ? " 
And angels, answering overhead, 

Sang, "Peace on earth, good -will to 
men ! " 

'T is eighteen hundred years and more 
Since those sweet oracles were dumb; 

We wait for Him, like them of yore; 
Alas, He seems so slow to come ! 

But it was said, in words of gold 
No time or sorrow e'er shall dim, 

That little children might be bold 
In perfect trust to come to Him. 

All round about our feet shall shine 
A light like that the wise men saw, 

If we our loving wills incline 

To that sweet Life which is the Law. 

So shall we learn to understand 

The simple faith of shepherds then, 

And, clasping kindly hand in hand, 

Sing, " Peace on earth, good - will to 



And they who do their souls no wrong, 
But keep at eve the faith of morn, 

Shall daily hear the angel-song, 

" To-day the Prince of Peace is born ! 



MY PORTRAIT GALLERY 

Oft round my hall of portraiture I gaze, 
By Memory reared, the artist wise and 

holy, 
From stainless quarries of deep -buried 

days. 
There, as I muse in soothing melancholy, 
Your faces glow in more than mortal youth, 
Companions of my prime, now vanished 

wholly, 
The loud, impetuous boy, the low-voiced 

maiden, 
Now for the first time seen in flawless truth. 
Ah, never master that drew mortal breath 
Can match thy portraits, just and generous 

Death, 
Whose brush with sweet regretful tints is 

laden ! 
Thou paintest that which struggled here 

below 
Half understood, or understood for woe, 
And with a sweet forewarning 
Mak'st round the sacred front an aureole 

glow 
Woven of that light that rose on Easter 

morning. 

PAOLO TO FRANCESCA 

I was with thee in Heaven: I cannot tell 
If years or moments, so the sudden bliss, 
When first we found, then lost, us in a kiss, 
Abolished Time, abolished Earth and Hell, 
Left only Heaven. Then from our blue 

there fell 
The dagger's flash, and did not fall amiss, 
For nothing now can rob my life of this, — 
That once with thee in Heaven, all else is 

well. 
Us, undivided when man's vengeance came, 
God's half - forgives that doth not here 

divide ; 
And, were this bitter whirl-blast fanged 

with flame, 
To me 't were summer, we being side by 

side : 
This granted, I God's mercy will not blame, 
For, given thy nearness, nothing is denied. 



404 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



SONNET 

SCOTTISH BORDER 

The following- letter to Mr. Howells, then 
editor of The Atlantic Monthly, in which this 
sonnet was printed, is a little ont of proportion 
as a head-note to a poem of fourteen lines, but 
it is too characteristic and too indicative of 
Lowell's extreme solicitude over his verse to 
be omitted. " There was one verse in the 
Border sonnet which, when I came to copy 
it, worried me with its lack of just what I 
wanted. Only one ? you will say. Yes, all ; 
but never mind — this one most. Instead of 
4 Where the shy ballad could its leaves unfold ' 

read ' dared its blooms.' I had liefer ' cup,' 
but cup is already metaphoric when applied 
to flowers, and Bottom the Weaver would be 
sure to ask in one of the many journals he 
edits — ' How unfold a cup ? Does he mean 
one of those pocket drinking-cups — leathern 
inconveniences that always stick when you try 
to unfold 'em ? ' Damn Bottom ! We ought 
not to think of him, but then the Public is 
made up of him, and I wish him to know that 
I was thinking of a flower. Besides, the son- 
net is, more than any other kind of verse, a 
deliberate composition, and ' susceptible of a 
high polish," as the dendrologists say of the 
woods of certain trees. Or shall we say ' grew 
in secret bold ' ? I write both on the opposite 
leaf, that you may choose one to paste over 
and not get the credit of tinkering my rhymes. 

dared its blooms 
grew in secret bold. 

Perhaps, after all, it is the buzzing of that b in 
blooms and bold, answering his brother b in 
ballads that 6-witched me, and merely chang- 
ing ' could ' to ' dared ' is all that is wanted. 
The sentiment of this sonnet pleases me." 

As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills 
Whose heather-purpled slopes, in glory 

rolled, 
Flush all my thought with momentary 

gold, 
What pang of vague regret my fancy 

thrills ? 
Here 't is enchanted ground the peasant 

tills, 
Where the shy ballad dared its blooms un- 
fold, 
And memory's glamour makes new sights 

seem old, 
As when our life some vanished dream 

fulfils. 



Yet not to thee belong these painless tears, 
Land loved ere seen: before my darkened 

eyes, 
From far beyond the waters and the years, 
Horizons mute that wait their poet rise; 
The stream before me fades and disappears, 
And in the Charles the western splendor 

dies. 

SONNET 

ON BEING ASKED FOR AN AUTOGRAPH 
IN VENICE 

Amid these fragments of heroic days 
When thought met deed with mutual pas- 
sion's leap, 
There sits a Fame whose silent trump makes 



What short-lived rumor of ourselves we 

raise. 
They had far other estimate of praise 
Who stamped the signet of their souls so 

deep 
In art and action, and whose memories 

keep 
Their height like stars above our misty 



In this grave presence to record my name 
Something within me hangs the head and 

shrinks. 
Dull were the soul without some joy in 

fame; 
Yet here to claim remembrance were, me- 

thinks, 
Like him who, in the desert's awful frame, 
Notches his cockney initials on the Sphinx. 



THE DANCING BEAR 

Far over Elf-land poets stretch their sway, 
And win their dearest crowns beyond the 

goal 
Of their own conscious purpose; they con- 
trol 
With gossamer threads wide-flown our 

fancy's play, 
And so our action. On my walk to-day, 
A wallowing bear begged clumsily his toll, 
When straight a vision rose of Atta Troll, 
And scenes ideal witched mine eyes away. 
" Merci, Mossieu ! " the astonished bear- 
ward cried, 
Grateful for thrice his hope to me, the 
slave 



PRISON OF CERVANTES 



405 



Of partial memory, seeing at his side 
A bear immortal. The glad dole I gave 
Was none of mine; poor Heine o'er the 

wide 
Atlantic welter stretched it from his grave. 



THE MAPLE 

The Maple puts her corals on in May, 

While loitering frosts about the lowlands 
cling, 

To be in tune with what the robins sing, 

Plastering new log-huts 'mid her branches 
gray; 

But when the Autumn southward turns 
away, 

Then in her veins burns most the blood of 
Spring, 

And every leaf, intensely blossoming, 

Makes the year's sunset pale the set of 
day. 

O Youth unprescient, were it only so 

With trees you plant, and in whose shade 
reclined, 

Thinking their drifting blooms Fate's cold- 
est snow, 

You carve dear names upon the faithful 
rind, 

Nor in that vernal stem the cross fore- 
know 

That Age shall bear, silent, yet uure- 
signed ! 



NIGHTWATCHES 

While the slow clock, as they were miser's 

gold, 
Counts and recounts the mornward steps of 

Time, 
The darkness thrills with conscience of 

each crime 
By Death committed, daily grown more 

bold. 
Once more the list of all my wrongs is 

told, 
And ghostly hands stretch to me from my 

prime 
Helpless farewells, as from an alien clime; 
For each new loss redoubles all the old. 
This morn 't was May; the blossoms were 

astir 
With southern wind; but now the boughs 

are bent 



With snow instead of birds, and all things 

freeze. 
How much of all my past is dumb with 

her, 
And of my future, too, for with her went 
Half of that world I ever cared to please ! 



DEATH OF QUEEN MERCEDES 

In a letter to his daughter from Madrid, 
July 26, 1878, Lowell wrote of Queen Mer- 
cedes: " Anything more tragic than the cir- 
cumstances of her death it would be hard to 
imagine. She was actually receiving extreme 
unction while the guns were firing in honor of 
her eighteenth birthday, and four days later 
we saw her dragged to her dreary tomb at the 
Escorial, followed by the coach and its eight 
white horses in which she had driven in tri- 
umph from the church to the palace on the 
day of her wedding. The poor brutes tossed 
their snowy plumes as haughtily now as then. 
Her death is really a great public loss. She 
was amiable, intelligent, and simple — not 
beautiful but ^oocZ-looking — and was already 
becoming popular." 

Hers all that Earth could promise or be- 
stow, — 

Youth, Beauty, Love, a crown, the beckon- 
ing years, 

Lids never wet, unless with joyous tears, 

A life remote from every sordid woe, 

And by a nation's swelled to lordlier flow. 

What lurking-place, thought we, for doubts 
or fears, 

When, the day's swan, she swam along the 
cheers 

Of the AlcaM, five happy months ago ? 

The guns were shouting Io Hymen then 

That, on her birthday, now denounce her 
doom; 

The same white steeds that tossed their 
scorn of men 

To-day as proudly drag her to the tomb. 

Grim jest of fate ! Yet who dare call it 
blind, 

Knowing what life is, what our human- 
kind ? 

PRISON OF CERVANTES 

Seat of all woes ? Though Nature's firm 
decree 

The narrowing soul with narrowing dun- 
geon bind, 



406 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



Yet was his free of motion as the wind, 

And held both worlds, of spirit and sense, 
in fee. 

In charmed communion with his dual mind 

He wandered Spain, himself both knight 
and hind, 

Redressing wrongs he knew must ever be. 

His humor wise could see life's long de- 
ceit, 

Man's baffled aims, nor therefore both de- 
spise ; 

His knightly nature could ill fortune greet 

Like an old friend. Whose ever such kind 
eyes 

That pierced so deep, such scope, save his 
whose feet 

By Avon ceased 'neath the same April's 
skies ? 



fO A LADY PLAYING ON THE 
CITHERN 

So dreamy-soft the notes, so far away 
They seem to fall, the horns of Oberon 
Blow their faint Hunt's-up from the good- 
time gone; 
Or, on a morning of long-withered May, 
Larks tinkle unseen o'er Claudian arches 

gray, 
That Rome ward crawl from Dreamland; 

and anon 
My fancy flings her cloak of Darkness on, 
To vanish from the dungeon of To-day. 
In happier times and scenes I seem to 

be, 
And, as her fingers flutter o'er the strings, 
The days return when I was young as she, 
And my fledged thoughts began to feel 

their wings 
With all Heaven's blue before them: 

Memory 
Or Music is it such enchantment sings ? 



THE EYE'S TREASURY 

Gold of the reddening sunset, backward 
thrown 

In largess on my tall paternal trees, 

Thou with false hope or fear didst never 
tease 

His heart that hoards thee; nor is child- 
hood flown 

From him whose life no fairer boon hath 
known 



Than that what pleased him earliest still 
should please: 

And who hath incomes safe from chance as 
these, 

Gone in a moment, yet for life his own ? 

All other gold is slave of earthward laws; 

This to the deeps of ether takes its flight, 

And on the topmost leaves makes glorious 
pause 

Of parting pathos ere it yield to night: 

So linger, as from me earth's light with- 
draws, 

Dear touch of Nature, tremulously bright ! 



PESSIMOPTIMISM 

Ye little think what toil it was to build 
A world of men imperfect even as this, 
Where we conceive of Good by what we 

B 

Of ID b ' wherewith best days are 

fiiW- 

A world ">se every atom is self-willed, 
Whose < uer-sfcone is propt on artifice, 
V L / sliorter-lived than woman's 

Whose a hoarded is but to be 

spilled. 
Yet this is better than a life of caves, 
Whose highest art was scratching on a 

bone, 
Or chipping toilsome arrowheads of flint ; 
Better, though doomed to hear while Cleon 

raves, 
To see wit's want eterned in paint or 

stone, 
And wade the drain-drenched shoals of 

daily print. 



THE BRAKES 

What countless years and wealth of brain 
were spent 

To bring us hither from our caves and 
huts, 

And trace through pathless wilds the deep- 
worn ruts 

Of faith and habit, by whose deep in- 
dent 

Prudence may guide if genius be not lent, 

Genius, not always happy when it shuts 

Its ears against the plodder's ifs and 
buts, 



LOVE'S CLOCK 



407 



Hoping in one rash leap to snatch the 


Surely for thee are meant 


event. 


These hues so orient 


The coursers of the sun, whose hoofs of 


That with a sultan's tent 


flame 


Each tree invites the sun ; 


Consume morn's misty threshold, are exact 


Our Earth such homage pays, 


As bankers' clerks, and all this star-poised 


So decks her dusty ways, 


frame, 


And keeps such holidays, 


One swerve allowed, were with convulsion 


For one and only one. 


rackt ; 




This world were doomed, should Dulness 


My brain shapes form and face, 


fail, to tame 


Throbs with the rhythmic grace 


Wit's feathered heels in the stern stocks of 


And cadence of her pace 


fact. 


To all fine instincts true ; 




Her footsteps, as they pass, 


A FOREBODING 


Than moonbeams over grass 




Fall lighter, — but, alas, 


What were the whole void world, if thou 


More insubstantial too ! 


wert dead, 




Whose briefest absence can eclipse my 

day, 
And make the hours that danced with 




LOVE'S CLOCK 


Time away 




Drag their funereal steps with muffled 


A PASTORAL 


head ? ^ 
Through thee, meseems, the v r erv f rose is 




DAPHNIS waiting 


red, i 


" Dryad feet, 


From thee the violet steal its breath in 


Be doubly fleet, 


May, 


Timed to my heart's expectant beat 


From thee draw life all things that grow 


While I await her ! 


not gray, 


' At four,' vowed she ; 


And by thy force the happy stars are. sped. 


'T is scarcely three, 


Thou near, the hope of thee to overflow 


Yet by my time it seems to be 


Fills all my earth and heaven, as when in 


A good hour later ! " 


Spring, 




Ere April come, the birds and blossoms 


CHLOE 


know, 


" Bid me not stay ! 


And grasses brighten round her feet to 


Hear reason, pray ! 


cling; 


'T is striking six ! Sure never day 


Nay, and this hope delights all nature so 


Was short as this is ! " 


That the dumb turf I tread on seems to 




sing. 


DAPHNIS 




" Reason nor rhyme 




Is in the chime ! 


III. FANCY 


It can't be five ; I 've scarce had time 




To beg two kisses ! " 


UNDER THE OCTOBER MAPLES 


BOTH 


What mean these banners spread, 


" Early or late, 


These paths with royal red 


When lovers wait, 


So gaily carpeted ? 


And Love's watch gains, if Time a gait 


Comes there a prince to-day ? 


So snail-like chooses, 


Such footing were too fine 


Why should his feet 


For feet less argentine 


Become more fleet 


Than Dian's own or thine, 


Than cowards' are, when lovers meet 


Queen whom my tides obey. 


And Love's watch loses ? " 



408 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 





Not so dire her fate as theirs, 


ELEANOR MAKES MACAROONS 


Since her friend this gift declares 




Choicest of his birthday boons, — 


Light of triumph in her eyes, 


Eleanor's dear macaroons ! 


Eleanor her apron ties; 


February 22, 1884. 


As she pushes back her sleeves, 




High resolve her bosom heaves. 




Hasten, cook ! impel the fire 


TELEPATHY 


To the pace of her desire; 




As you hope to save your soul, 


" And how could you dream of meet- 


Bring a virgin casserole, 


ing?" 


Brightest bring of silver spoons, — 


Nay, how can you ask me, sweet ? 


Eleanor makes macaroons ! 


All day my pulse had been beating 




The tune of your coming feet. 


Almond-blossoms, now adance 




In the smile of Southern France, 


And as nearer and ever nearer 


Leave your sport with sun and breeze, 


I felt the throb of your tread, 


Think of duty, not of ease; 


To be in the world grew dearer, 


Fashion, 'neath their jerkins brown, 


And my blood ran rosier red. 


Kernels white as thistle-down, 




Tiny cheeses made with cream 


Love called, and I could not linger, 


From the Galaxy's mid-stream, 


But sought the forbidden tryst, 


Blanched in light of honeymoons, — 


As music follows the finger 


Eleanor makes macaroons ! 


Of the dreaming lutanist. 


Now for sugar, — nay, our plan 


And though you had said it and said it, 


Tolerates no work of man. 


" We must not be happy to-day," 


Hurry, then, ye golden bees; 


Was I not wiser to credit 


Fetch your clearest honey, please, 


The fire in my feet than your Nay ? 


Garnered on a Yorkshire moor, 




While the last larks sing and soar, 




From the heather-blossoms sweet 


SCHERZO 


Where sea-breeze and sunshine meet, 




And the Augusts mask as Junes, — 


When the down is on the chin 


Eleanor makes macaroons ! 


And the gold-gleam in the hair, 




When the birds their sweethearts win 


Next the pestle and mortar find, 


And champagne is in the air, 


Pure rock-crystal, — these to grind 


Love is here, and Love is there, 


Into paste more smooth than silk, 


Love is welcome everywhere. 


Whiter than the milkweed's milk: 




Spread it on a rose-leaf, thus, 


Summer's cheek too soon turns thin, 


Cate to please Theocritus; 


Days grow briefer, sunshine rare; 


Then the fire with spices swell, 


Autumn from his cannekin 


While, for her completer spell, 


Blows the froth to chase Despair: 


Mystic canticles she croons, — 


Love is met with frosty stare, 


Eleanor makes macaroons ! 


Cannot house 'neath branches bare. 


Perfect ! and all this to waste 


When new life is in the leaf 


On a graybeard's palsied taste ! 


And new red is in the rose, 


Poets so their verses write, 


Though Love's Maytime be as brief 


Heap them full of life and light, 


As a dragon-fly's repose, 


And then fling them to the rude 


Never moments come like those, 


Mumbling of the multitude. 


Be they Heaven or Hell : who knows ? 



THE PREGNANT COMMENT 



409 



All too soon comes Winter's grief, 
Spendthrift Love's false friends turn foes; 
Softly comes Old Age, the thief, 
Steals the rapture, leaves the throes: 
Love his mantle round him throws, — 
"Time to say Good-by; it snows." 



"FRANCISCUS DE VERULAMIO 
SIC COGITAVIT" 

That's a rather bold speech, my Lord 
Bacon, 

For, indeed, is 't so easy to know 
Just how much we from others have taken, 

And how much our own natural flow ? 

Since your mind bubbled up at its foun- 
tain, 
How many streams made it elate, 
While it calmed to the plain from the 
mountain, 
As every mind must that grows great ? 

While you thought 't was You thinking as 
newly 
As Adam still wet with God's dew, 
You forgot in your self-pride that truly 
The whole Past was thinking through 
you. 

Greece, Rome, nay, your namesake, old 
Roger, 
With Truth's nameless delvers who 
wrought 
In the dark mines of Truth, helped to prod 
your 
Fine brain with the goad of their thought. 

As mummy was prized for a rich hue 
The painter no elsewhere could find, 

So 't was buried men's thinking with which 
you 
Gave the ripe mellow tone to your mind. 

I heard the proud strawberry saying, 
" Only look what a ruby I 've made ! " 

It forgot how the bees in their maying 
Had brought it the stuff for its trade. 

And yet there 's the half of a truth in it, 
And my Lord might his copyright sue; 

For a thought 's his who kindles new youth 
in it, 
Or so puts it as makes it more true. 



The birds but repeat without ending 
The same old traditional notes, 

Which some, by more happily blending, 
Seem to make over new in their throats; 

And we men through our old bit of song 
run, 

Until one just improves on the rest, 
And we call a thing his, in the long run, 

Who utters it clearest and best. 



AUSPEX 

My heart, I cannot still it, 
Nest that had song-birds in it; 
And when the last shall go, 
The dreary days, to fill it, 
Instead of lark or linnet, 
Shall whirl dead leaves and snow. 

Had they been swallows only, 
Without the passion stronger 
That skyward longs and sings, — 
Woe 's me, I shall be lonely 
When I can feel no longer 
The impatience of their wings ! 

A moment, sweet delusion, 
Like birds the brown leaves hover; 
But it will not be long 
Before their wild confusion 
Fall wavering down to cover 
The poet and his song. 



THE PREGNANT COMMENT 

Opening one day a book of mine, 
I absent, Hester found a line 
Praised with a pencil-mark, and this 
She left transfigured with a kiss. 

When next upon the page I chance, 
Like Poussin's nymphs my pulses dance, 
And whirl my fancy where it sees 
Pan piping 'neath Arcadian trees, 
Whose leaves no winter-scenes rehearse, 
Still young and glad as Homer's verse. 
"What mean," I ask, " these sudden joys ? 
This feeling fresher than a boy's ? 
What makes this line, familiar long, 
New as the first bird's April song ? 
I could, with sense illumined thus, 
Clear doubtful texts in iEschylus ! " 



4io 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



Laughing, one day she gave the key, 
My riddle's open-sesame; 
Then added, with a smile demure, 
Whose downcast lids veiled triumph sure, 
" If what I left there give you pain, 
You — you — can take it off again ; 
'T was for my poet, not for him, 
Your Doctor Donne there ! " 

Earth grew dim 
And wavered in a golden mist, 
As rose, not paper, leaves I kissed. 
Donne, you forgive ? I let you keep 
Her precious comment, poet deep. 



THE LESSON 

I sat and watched the walls of night 
With cracks of sudden lightning glow, 

And listened while with clumsy might 
The thunder wallowed to and fro. 

The rain fell softly now; the squall, 
That to a torrent drove the trees, 

Had whirled beyond us to let fall 
Its tumult on the whitening seas. 

But still the lightning crinkled keen, 
Or fluttered fitful from behind 

The leaden drifts, then only seen, 
That rumbled eastward on the wind. 

Still as gloom followed after glare, 

While bated breath the pine-trees drew, 

Tiny Salmoneus of the air, 

His mimic bolts the firefly threw. 

He thought, no doubt, "Those flashes 
grand, 
That light for leagues the shuddering 
sky, 
Are made, a fool could understand, 
By some superior kind of fly. 

" He 's of our race's elder branch, 
His family-arms the same as ours, 

Both born the twy-forked flame to launch, 
Of kindred, if unequal, powers." 

And is man wiser ? Man who takes 
His consciousness the law to be 

Of all beyond his ken, and makes 
God but a bigger kind of Me ? 



SCIENCE AND POETRY 

He who first stretched his nerves of sub- 
tile wire 
Over the land and through the sea-depths 

still, 
Thought only of the flame-winged messen- 
ger 
As a dull drudge that should encircle earth 
With sordid messages of Trade, and tame 
Blithe Ariel to a bagman. But the Muse 
Not long will be defrauded. From her foe 
Her misused wand she snatches ; at a touch, 
The Age of Wonder is renewed again, 
And to our disenchanted day restores 
The Shoes of Swiftness that give odds to 

Thought, 
The Cloak that makes invisible ; and with 

these 
I glide, an airy fire, from shore to shore, 
Or from my Cambridge whisper to Cathay. 

A NEW YEAR'S GREETING 

The century numbers fourscore years; 

You, fortressed in your teens, 
To Time's alarums close your ears, 
And, while he devastates your peers, 

Conceive not what he means. 

If e'er life's winter fleck with snow 

Your hair's deep shadowed bowers, 
That winsome head an art would know 
To make it charm, and wear it so 
As 't were a wreath of flowers. 

If to such fairies years must come, 

May yours fall soft and slow 
As, shaken by a bee's low hum, 
The rose-leaves waver, sweetly dumb, 
Down to their mates below ! 

THE DISCOVERY 

I watched a moorland torrent run 
Down through the rift itself had made, 

Golden as honey in the sun, 
Of darkest amber in the shade. 

In this wild glen at last, methought, 
The magic's secret I surprise; 

Here Celia's guardian fairy caught 
The changeful splendors of her eyes. 



FITZ ADAM'S STORY 



411 



All else grows tame, the sky's one blue. 
The one long languish of the rose, 

But these, beyond prevision new, 
Shall charm and startle to the close.. 



WITH A SEASHELL 

Shell, whose lips, than mine more cold, 
Might with Dian's ear make bold, 
Seek my Lady's ; if thou win 
To that portal, shut from sin, 
Where commissioned angels' swords 
Startle back unholy words, 
Thou a miracle shalt see 
Wrought by it and wrought in thee ; 
Thou, the dumb one, shalt recover 
Speech of poet, speech of lover. 
If she deign to lift you there, 
Murmur what I may not dare; 
In that archway, pearly-pink 
As the Dawn's untrodden brink, 
Murmur, " Excellent and good, 
Beauty's best in every mood, 
Never common, never tame, 
Changeful fair as windwaved flame " — 
Nay, I maunder; this she hears 
Every day with mocking ears, 
With a brow not sudden-stained 
With the flush of bliss restrained. 
With no tremor of the pulse 
More than feels the dreaming dulse 
In the midmost ocean's caves, 
When a tempest heaps the waves. 
Thou must woo her in a phrase 
Mystic as the opal's blaze, 
Which pure maids alone can see 
When their lovers constant be. 
I with thee a secret share, 
Half a hope, and half a prayer, 
Though no reach of mortal skill 
Ever told it all, or will; 
Say, " He bids me — nothing more — 
Tell you what you guessed before ! " 

THE SECRET 

I have a fancy : how shall I bring it 
Home to all mortals wherever they be ? 
Say it or sing it ? Shoe it or wing it, 
So it may outrun or outfly Me, 
Merest cocoon-web whence it broke free ? 

Only one secret can save from disaster, 
Only one magic is that of the Master : 



Set it to music ; give it a tune, — 

Tune the brook sings you, tune the breeze 

brings you, 
Tune the wild columbines nod to in June ! 

This is the secret: so simple, you see ! 

Easy as loving, easy as kissing, 

Easy as — well, let me ponder — as miss- 
ing, 

Known, since the world was, by scarce two 
or three 



IV. HUMOR AND SATIRE 

FITZ ADAM'S STORY 

[The greater part of this poem was written 
many years ago as part of a larger one, to be 
called The Nooning, made up of tales in verse, 
some of them grave, some comic. It gives 
me a sad pleasure to remember that I was en- 
couraged in this project by my friend the late 
Arthur Hugh Clough.] 

Thus Lowell in the note which he prefixed 
to this poem when printing it in Heartsease and 
Hue. In his Letters are some more detailed 
references to the design of The Nooning. As 
far back as 1849, when issuing a new edition 
of his Poems, he wrote to Mr. Briggs : " My 
next volume, I think, will show an advance. 
It is to be called The Nooning. Now guess 
what it will be. The name suggests pleas- 
ant thoughts, does it not ? But I shall not 
tell you anything about it yet, and you must 
not mention it." A little later he wrote to 
the same correspondent : '" Maria invented the 
title for me, and is it not a pleasant one ? My 
plan is this. I am going to bring together a 
party of half a dozen old friends at Elmwood, 
They go down to the river and bathe, and then 
one proposes that they shall go up into a great 
willow-tree (which stands at the end of the 
causey near our house, and has seats in it) to 
take their nooning. There they agree that 
each shall tell a story or recite a poem of 
some sort. In the tree they find a countryman 
already resting himself, who enters into the 
plan and tells a humorous tale, with touches 
of Yankee character and habits in it. I am 
to read my poem of the Voyage of Leif to 
Vinland, in which I mean to bring my hero 
straight into Boston Bay, as befits a Bay-state 
poet. Two of my poems are already written 
— one The Fountain of Youth (no connection 
with any other firm), and the other an Address 
to the Muse, by the Transcendentalist of the 
party. ... In The Nooning I shall have not 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



even a glance towards Reform." Apparently 
Lowell regarded the book as imminent, bnt 
the death of his daughter Rose early in 1850 
and the subsequent journey to Europe seem to 
have deferred the execution of his plans, and 
the book, as we know, never had a whole, 
though there were several fragments of it pub- 
lished. He held tenaciously, however, to his 
plan. In June, 1853, he wrote again to Mr. 
Briggs : " I have The Nooning to finish — which 
shall turn out well ; " and thirteen years later 
he wrote to Mr. Norton : " I have been work- 
ing hard, and if my liver will let me alone, as 
it does now, am likely to go on all winter. 
And on what, do you suppose ? I have taken 
up one of the unfinished tales of The Nooning, 
and it grew to a poem of near seven hundred 
lines ! [plainly this poem of Fitz Adam's 
Story]. It is mainly descriptive. First, a 
sketch of the narrator, then his 'prelude,' 
then his ' tale.' I describe an old inn and its 
landlord, bar-room, etc. It is very homely, 
but right from nature. I have lent it to Child 
and hope he will like it, for if he does n't I 
shall feel discouraged. It was very interest- 
ing to take up a thread dropt so long ago, and 
curious as a phenomenon of memory to find 
how continuous it had remained in my mind, 
and how I could go on as if I had let it fall 
only yesterday." 

A scheme so long persisted in and returned 
to so often could scarcely be wholly unknown, 
and in a letter to Professor James B. Thayer 
written in December, 1868, we find Lowell 
answering a query he had put : " And The 
Nooning. Sure enough, where is it ? The 
June Idyl [renamed Under the Willows] (writ- 
ten in '51 or '52) is a part of what I had writ- 
ten as the induction to it. The description of 
spring in one of the Biglow Papers is another 
fragment of the same, tagged with rhyme for 
the nonce. So is a passage in Mason and Slidell 
beginning 

• Oh, strange new world.' 

The Voyage to Vinland, the Pictures from 
Appledore, and Fitz Adam's Story were written 
for The Nooning, as originally planned. So, 
you see, I had made some progress. Perhaps 
it will come by and by — not in the shape I 
meant at first, for something broke my life in 
two, and I cannot piece it together again. Be- 
sides, the Muse asks all of a man, and for many 
years I have been unable to give myself up as I 
would." Fragments of an Unfinished Poem, p. 
158, is another bit of flotsam from The Nooning. 

The next whose fortune 't was a tale to 

tell 
Was one whom men, before they thought, 

loved well, 



And after thinking wondered why they did, 
For half he seemed to let them, half for- 
bid, 
And wrapped him so in humors, sheath on 

sheath, 
'T was hard to guess the mellow soul be- 
neath; 
But, once divined, you took him to your 

heart, 
While he appeared to bear with you as 

part 
Of life's impertinence, and once a year 
Betrayed his true self by a smile or tear, 
Or rather something sweetly-shy and loath, 
Withdrawn ere fully shown, and mixed of 

both. 
A cynic ? Not precisely : one who thrust 
Against a heart too prone to love and trust, 
Who so despised false sentiment he knew 
Scarce in himself to part the false and 

true, 
And strove to hide, by roughening-o'er the 

skin, 
Those cobweb nerves he could not dull 

within. 
Gentle by birth, but of a stem decayed, 
He shunned life's rivalries and hated trade; 
On a small patrimony and larger pride, 
He lived uneasef nl on the Other Side 
(So he called Europe), only coming West 
To give his Old- World appetite new zest; 
Yet still the New World spooked it in his 

veins, 
A ghost he could not lay with all his pains ; 
For never Pilgrims' offshoot scapes control 
Of those old instincts that have shaped his 

soul. 
A radical in thought, he puffed away 
With shrewd contempt the dust of usage 

gray, 
Yet loathed democracy as one who saw, 
In what he longed to love, some vulgar 

flaw, 
And, shocked through all his delicate re- 
serves, 
Remained a Tory by his taste and nerves. 
His fancy's thrall, he drew all ergoes 

thence, 
And thought himself the type of common 

sense ; 
Misliking women, not from cross or whim, 
But that his mother shared too much in 

him, 
And he half felt that what in them was 
grace 



FITZ ADAM'S STORY 



4i3 



Made the unlucky weakness of his race. 

What powers he had he hardly cared to 
know, 

But sauntered through the world as through 
a show; 

A critic fine in his haphazard way, 

A sort of mild La Bruyere on half-pay. 

For comic weaknesses he had an eye 

Keen as an acid for an alkali, 

Yet you could feel, through his sardonic 
tone, 

He loved them all, unless they were his 
own. 

You might have called him, with his hu- 
morous twist, 

A kind of human entomologist: 

As these bring home, from every walk they 
take, 

Their hat-crowns stuck with bugs of curi- 
ous make, 

So he filled all the lining of his head 

With characters impaled and ticketed, 

And had a cabinet behind his eyes 

For all they caught of mortal oddities. 

He might have been a poet — many 
worse — 

But that he had, or feigned, contempt of 
verse ; 

Called it tattooing language, and held 
rhymes 

The young world's lullaby of ruder times. 

Bitter in words, too indolent for gall, 

He satirized himself the first of all, 

In men and their affairs could find no law, 

And was the ill logic that he thought he 



Scratching a match to light his pipe 

anew, 
With eyes half shut some musing whiffs he 

drew 
And thus began: " I give you all my word, 
I think this mock-Decameron absurd; 
Boccaccio's garden! how bring that to pass 
In our bleak clime save under double 

glass ? 
The moral east-wind of New England life 
Would snip its gay luxuriance like a knife; 
Mile-deep the glaciers brooded here, they 

say, 
Through seons numb; we feel their chill 

to-day. 
These foreign plants are but half-hardy 

still, 
Die on a south, and on a north wall chill. 



Had we stayed Puritans ! They had some 
heat, 

(Though whence derived I have my own 
conceit,) 

But you have long ago raked up their fires ; 

Where they had faith, you 've ten sham- 
Gothic spires. 

Why more exotics ? Try your native 
vines, 

And in some thousand years you may have 
wines; 

Your present grapes are harsh, all pulps 
and skins, 

And want traditions of ancestral bins 

That saved for evenings round the polished 
board 

Old lava-fires, the sun-steeped hillside's 
hoard. 

Without a Past, you lack that southern 
wall 

O'er which the vines of Poesy should 
crawl; 

Still they 're your only hope ; no midnight 
oil 

Makes up for virtue wanting in the soil; 

Manure them well and prune them; 't 
won't be France, 

Nor Spain, nor Italy, but there 's your 
chance. 

You have one story-teller worth a score 

Of dead Boccaccios, — nay, add twenty 
more, — 

A hawthorn asking spring's most dainty 
breath, 

And him you 're freezing pretty well to 
death. 

However, since you say so, I will tease 

My memory to a story by degrees, 

Though you will cry, ' Enough ! ' I 'm well- 
nigh sure, 

Ere I have dreamed through half my over- 
ture. 

Stories were good for men who had no 
books, 

(Fortunate race !) and built their nests 
like rooks 

In lonely towers, to which the Jongleur 
brought 

His pedler's-box of cheap and tawdry 
thought, 

With here and there a fancy fit to see 

Wrought in quaint grace in golden fili- 
gree, — 

Some ring that with the Muse's finger yet 

Is warm, like Aucassin and Nicolete; 



414 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



The morning newspaper has spoilt his 

trade, 
(For better or for worse, I leave unsaid,) 
And stories now, to suit a public nice, 
Must be half epigram, half pleasant vice. 

"All tourists know Shebagog County: 
there 

The summer idlers take their yearly stare, 

Dress to see Nature in a well-bred way, 

As 't were Italian opera, or play, 

Encore the sunrise (if they 're out of bed) , 

And pat the Mighty Mother on the head: 

These have I seen, — all things are good to 
see, — 

And wondered much at their complacency. 

This world's great show, that took in get- 
ting-up 

Millions of years, they finish ere they sup; 

Sights that God gleams through with soul- 
tingling force 

They glance approvingly as things of 
course, 

Say, ' That 's a grand rock,' ' This a pretty 
fall,' 

Not thinking, ' Are we worthy ? ' What 
if all 

The scornful landscape should turn round 
and say, 

* This is a fool, and that a popinjay ' ? 

I often wonder what the Mountain thinks 

Of French boots creaking o'er his breath- 
less brinks, 

Or how the Sun would scare the chattering 
crowd, 

If some fine day he chanced to think aloud. 

I, who love Nature much as sinners can, 

Love her where she most grandeur shows, 
— in man : 

Here find I mountain, forest, cloud, and 
sun, 

River and sea, and glows when day is done ; 

Nay, where she makes grotesques, and 
moulds in jest 

The clown's cheap clay, I find unfading 
zest. 

The natural instincts year by year retire, 

As deer shrink northward from the settler's 
fire, 

And he who loves the wild game-flavor 
more 

Than city-feasts, where every man's a bore 

To every other man, must seek it where 

The steamer's throb and railway's iron 
blare 



Have not yet startled with their punctual 
stir 

The shy, wood- wandering brood of Charac- 
ter. 

"There is a village, once the county 

town, 
Through which the weekly mail rolled 

dustily down, 
Where the courts sat, it may be, twice a 

year, 
And the one tavern reeked with rustic 

cheer; 
Cheeshogquesumscot erst, now Jethro 

hight, 
Red-man and pale-face bore it equal spite. 
The railway ruined it, the natives say, 
That passed unwisely fifteen miles away, 
And made a drain to which, with steady 

ooze, 
Filtered away law, stage-coach, trade, and 

news. 
The railway saved it; so at least think 

those 
Who love old ways, old houses, old repose. 
Of course the Tavern stayed: its genial 

host 
Thought not of flitting more than did the 

post 
On which high-hung the fading signboard 

creaks, 
Inscribed, ' The Eagle Inn, by Ezra 

Weeks.' 

"If in life's journey you should ever 

find 
An inn medicinal for body and mind, 
'T is sure to be some drowsy-looking house 
Whose easy landlord has a bustling spouse: 
He, if he like you, will not long forego 
Some bottle deep in cobwebbed dust laid 

low, 
That, since the War we used to call the 

1 Last,' 
Has dozed and held its lang-syne memories 

fast: 
From him exhales that Indian-summer air 
Of hazy, lazy welcome everywhere, 
While with her toil the napery is white, 
The china dustless, the keen knife-blades 

bright, 
Salt dry as sand, and bread that seems as 

though 
'T were rather sea-foam baked than vulgar 

dough. 



FITZ ADAM'S STORY 



4i5 



" In our swift country, houses trim and 

white 
Are pitched like tents, the lodging of a 

night; 
Each on its bank of baked turf mounted 

high 
Perches impatient o'er the roadside dry, 
While the wronged landscape coldly stands 

aloof, 
Refusing friendship with the upstart roof. 
Not so the Eagle ; on a grass-green swell 
That toward the south with sweet conces- 
sions fell 
It dwelt retired, and half had grown to be 
As aboriginal as rock or tree. 
It nestled close to earth, and seemed to 

brood 
O'er homely thoughts in a half-conscious 

mood, 
As by the peat that rather fades than burns 
The smouldering grandam nods and knits 

by turns, 
Happy, although her newest news were old 
Ere the first hostile drum at Concord 

rolled. 
If paint it e'er had known, it knew no more 
Than yellow lichens spattered thickly o'er 
That soft lead-gray, less dark beneath the 

eaves 
Which the slow brush of wind and weather 

leaves. 
The ample roof sloped backward to the 

ground, 
And vassal lean-tos gathered thickly round, 
Patched on, as sire or son had felt the need, 
Like chance growths sprouting from the 

old roof's seed, 
Just as about a yellow-pine-tree spring 
Its rough-barked darlings in a filial ring. 
But the great chimney was the central 

thought 
Whose gravitation through the cluster 

wrought; 
For 't is not styles far-fetched from Greece 

or Rome, 
But just the Fireside, that can make a 

home; 
None of your spindling things of modern 

style, 
Like pins stuck through to stay the card- 
built pile, 
It rose broad shouldered, kindly, debo- 
nair, 
Its warm breath whitening in the October 

air, 



While on its front a heart in outline showed 
The place it filled in that serene abode. 

" When first I chanced the Eagle to ex- 
plore, 
Ezra sat listless by the open door; 
One chair careened him at an angle meet, 
Another nursed his hugely-slippered feet; 
Upon a third reposed a shirt-sleeved arm, 
And the whole man diffused tobacco's 

charm. 
' Are you the landlord ? ' ' Wahl, I guess 

I be,' 
Watching the smoke, he answered leis- 
urely. 
He was a stoutish man, and through the 

breast 
Of his loose shirt there showed a brambly 

chest ; 
Streaked redly as a wind-foreboding morn, 
His tanned cheeks curved to temples closely 

shorn ; 
Clean-shaved he was, save where a hedge 

of gray 
Upon his brawny throat leaned every way 
About an Adam's-apple, that beneath 
Bulged like a boulder from a brambly heath. 
The Western World's true child and nurs- 
ling he, 
Equipt with aptitudes enough for three: 
No eye like his to value horse or cow, 
Or gauge the contents of a stack or mow; 
He could foretell the weather at a word, 
He knew the haunt of every beast and bird, 
Or where a two-pound trout was sure to lie, 
Waiting the flutter of his home-made fly; 
Nay, once in autumns five, he had the 

luck 
To drop at fair-play range a ten-tined 

buck; 
Of sportsmen true he favored every whim, 
But never cockney found a guide in him; 
A natural man, with all his instincts fresh, 
Not buzzing helpless in Reflection's mesh, 
Firm on its feet stood his broad-shouldered 

mind, 
As bluffly honest as a northwest wind; 
Hard-headed and soft-hearted, you 'd scarce 

meet 
A kindlier mixture of the shrewd and 

sweet; 
Generous by birth , and ill at saying ' No,' 
Yet in a bargain he was all men's foe, 
Would yield no inch of vantage in a trade, 
And give away ere nightfall all he made. 



416 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



" ' Can I have lodging here ? ' once more 

I said. 
He blew a whiff, and, leaning back his 

head, 
' You come a piece through Bailey's woods, 

I s'pose, 
Acrost a bridge where a big swamp-oak 

grows ? 
It don't grow, neither ; it 's ben dead ten 

year, 
Nor th' ain't a livin' creetur, fur nor near, 
Can tell wut killed it; but I some misdoubt 
'T was borers, there's sech heaps on 'em 

about. 
You did n' chance to run ag'inst my son, 
A long, slab-sided youngster with a gun ? 
He 'd oughto ben back more'n an hour 

ago, 
An' brought some birds to dress for supper 

— sho ! 
There he comes now. 'Say, Obed, wut ye 

got? 
(He '11 hev some upland plover like as not.) 
Wal, them 's real nice uns, an '11 eat A 1, 
Ef I can stop their bein' over-done; 
Nothin' riles me (I pledge my fastin' word) 
Like cookin' out the natur' of a bird; 
(Obed, you pick 'em out o' sight an' sound, 
Your ma'am don't love no feathers cluttrin' 

round ;) 
Jes' scare 'em with the coals, — thet 's my 

idee.' 
Then, turning suddenly about on me, 
'Wal, Square, I guess so. Callilate to 

stay? 
I '11 ask Mis' Weeks; 'bout thet it 's hern to 



"Well, there I lingered all October 

through, 
In that sweet atmosphere of hazy blue, 
So leisurely, so soothing, so forgiving, 
That sometimes makes New England fit 

for living. 
I watched the landscape, erst so granite 

glum, 
Bloom like the south side of a ripening 

plum, 
And each rock-maple on the hillside make 
His ten days' sunset doubled in the lake ; 
The very stone walls draggling up the hills 
Seemed touched, and wavered in their 

roundhead wills. 
Ah ! there 's a deal of sugar in the sun ! 
Tap me in Indian summer, I should run 



A juice to make rock-candy of, — but then 
We get such weather scarce one year in 
ten. 

" There was a parlor in the house, a room 
To make you shudder with its prudish 

gloom. 
The furniture stood round with such an air, 
There seemed an old maid's ghost in 

every chair, 
Which looked as it had scuttled to its 

place 
And pulled extempore a Sunday face, 
Too smugly proper for a world of sin, 
Like boys on whom the minister comes in. 
The table, fronting you with icy stare, 
Strove to look witless that its legs were 

bare, 
While the black sofa with its horse-hair 

pall 
Gloomed like a bier for Comfort's funeral. 
Each piece appeared to do its chilly best 
To seem an utter stranger to the rest, 
As if acquaintanceship were deadly sin, 
Like Britons meeting in a foreign inn. 
Two portraits graced the wall in grimmest 

truth, 
Mister and Mistress W. in their youth, — 
New England youth, that seems a sort of 

pill, 
Half wish-I-dared, half Edwards on the 

Will, 
Bitter to swallow, and which leaves a trace 
Of Calvinistic colic on the face. 
Between them, o'er the mantel, hung in 

state 
Solomon's temple, done in copperplate; 
Invention pure, but meant, we may pre- 
sume, 
To give some Scripture sanction to the 

room. 
Facing this last, two samplers you might 

see, 
Each, with its urn and stiffly-weeping tree, 
Devoted to some memory long ago 
More faded than their lines of worsted woe ; 
Cut paper decked their frames against the 

flies, 
Though none e'er dared an entrance who 

were wise, 
And bushed asparagus in fading green 
Added its shiver to the franklin clean. 

"When first arrived, I chilled a half- 
hour there, 



FITZ ADAM'S STORY 



4i7 



Nor dared deflower with use a single chair; 
I caught no cold, yet flying pains could find 
For weeks in me, — a rheumatism of mind. 
One thing alone imprisoned there had 

power 
To hold me in the place that long half- 
hour: 
A scutcheon this, a helm-surmounted shield, 
Three griffins argent on a sable field; 
A relic of the shipwrecked past was here, 
And Ezra held some Old- World lumber 

dear. 
Nay, do not smile ; I love this kind of thing, 
These cooped traditions with a broken wing, 
This freehold nook in Fancy's pipe-blown 

ball, 
This less than nothing that is more than 

all! 
Have I not seen sweet natures kept alive 
Amid the humdrum of your business hive, 
Undowered spinsters shielded from all 

harms, 
By airy incomes from a coat of arms ? " 

He paused a moment, and his features 
took 
The flitting sweetness of that inward look 
I hinted at before ; but, scarcely seen, 
It shrank for shelter 'neath his harder mien, 
And, rapping his black pipe of ashes clear, 
He went on with a self-derisive sneer: 
" No doubt we make a part of God's de- 
sign, 
And break the forest-path for feet divine; 
To furnish foothold for this grand prevision 
Is good, and yet — to be the mere transi- 
tion, 
That, you will say, is also good, though I 
Scarce like to feed the ogre By-and-by. 
Raw edges rasp my nerves; my taste is 

wooed 
By things that are, not going to be, good, 
Though were I what I dreamed two lustres 

gone, 
I 'd stay to help the Consummation on, 
Whether a new Rome than the old more 

fair, 
Or a deadflat of rascal-ruled despair; 
But my skull somehow never closed the 

suture 
That seems to knit yours firmly with the 

future, 
So you '11 excuse me if I 'm sometimes fain 
To tie the Past's warm nightcap o'er my 
brain; 



I 'm quite aware 't is not in fashion here, 
But then your northeast winds are so 
severe ! 

" But to my story : though 't is truly 
naught 

But a few hints in Memory's sketchbook 
caught, 

And which may claim a value on the score 

Of calling back some scenery now no more. 

Shall I confess ? The tavern's only Lar 

Seemed (be not shocked !) its homely-fea- 
tured bar. 

Here dozed a fire of beechen logs, that bred 

Strange fancies in its embers golden-red, 

And nursed the loggerhead whose hissing 
dip, 

Timed by nice instinct, creamed the mug 
of flip 

That made from mouth to mouth its genial 
round, 

Nor left one nature wholly winter-bound; 

Hence dropt the tinkling coal all mellow- 
ripe 

For Uncle Reuben's talk-extinguished pipe; 

Hence rayed the heat, as from an indoor 
sun, 

That wooed forth many a shoot of rustic 
fun. 

Here Ezra ruled as king by right divine ; 

No other face had such a wholesome shine, 

No laugh like his so full of honest cheer; 

Above the rest it crowed like Chanticleer. 

"In this one room his dame you never 

saw, 
Where reigned by custom old a Salic law; 
Here coatless lolled he on his throne of oak, 
And every tongue paused midway if he 

spoke. 
Due mirth he loved, yet was his sway severe ; 
No blear-eyed driveller got his stagger 

here; 
' Measure was happiness ; who wanted more, 
Must buy his ruin at the Deacon's store ; ' 
None but his lodgers after ten could stay, 
Nor after nine on eves of Sabbath-day. 
He had his favorites and his pensioners, 
The same that gypsy Nature owns for hers: 
Loose-ended souls, whose skills bring scanty 

gold, 
And whom the poor-house catches when 

they 're old ; 
Rude country-minstrels, men who doctor 

kine, 



4i8 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



Or graft, and, out of scions ten, save nine; 
Creatures of genius they, but never meant 
To keep step with the civic regiment. 
These Ezra welcomed, feeling in his mind 
Perhaps some motions of the vagrant kind; 
These paid no money, yet for them he drew 
Special Jamaica from a tap they knew, 
And, for their feelings, chalked behind the 

door 
With solemn face a visionary score. 
This thawed to life in Uncle Reuben's 

throat 
A torpid shoal of jest and anecdote, 
Like those queer fish that doze the droughts 

away, 
And wait for moisture, wrapped in sun- 
baked clay; 
This warmed the one-eyed fiddler to his 

task, 
Perched in the corner on an empty cask, 
By whose shrill art rapt suddenly, some 

boor 
Rattled a double-shuffle on the floor; 
* Hull's Victory ' was, indeed, the favorite 

air, 
Though * Yankee Doodle' claimed its 

proper share. 

"*T was there I caught from Uncle 
Reuben's lips, 
In dribbling monologue 'twixt whiffs and 

sips, 
The story I so long have tried to tell; 
The humor coarse, the persons common, — 

well, 
From Nature only do I love to paint, 
Whether she send a satyr or a saint; 
To me Sincerity 's the one thing good, 
Soiled though she be and lost to maiden- 
hood. 
Quompegan is a town some ten miles south 
From Jethro, at Nagumscot river-mouth, 
A seaport town, and makes its title good 
With lumber and dried fish and eastern 

wood. 
Here Deacon Bitters dwelt and kept the 

Store, 
The richest man for many a mile of shore; 
In little less than everything dealt he, 
From meeting-houses to a chest of tea; 
So dextrous therewithal a flint to skin, 
He could make profit on a single pin; 
In business strict, to bring the balance true 
He had been known to bite a fig in two, 
And change a board-nail for a shingle-nail. 



All that he had he ready held for sale, 
His house, his tomb, whate'er the law allows, 
And he had gladly parted with his spouse. 
His one ambition still to get and get, 
He would arrest your very ghost for debt. 
His store looked righteous, should the Par- 
son come, 
But in a dark back-room he peddled rum, 
And eased Ma'am Conscience, if she e'er 

would scold, 
By christening it with water ere he sold. 
A small, dry man he was, who wore a queue, 
And one white neckcloth all the week-days 

through, — 
On Monday white, by Saturday as dun 
As that worn homeward by the prodigal son. 
His frosted earlocks, striped with foxy 

brown, 
Were braided up to hide a desert crown; 
His coat was brownish, black perhaps of 

yore; 
In summer-time a banyan loose he wore; 
His trousers short, through many a season 

true, 
Made no pretence to hide his stockings blue ; 
A waistcoat buff his chief adornment was, 
Its porcelain buttons rimmed with dusky 

brass. 
A deacon he, you saw it in each limb, 
And well he knew to deacon-off a hymn, 
Or lead the choir through all its wandering 

woes 
With voice that gathered unction in his 

nose, 
Wherein a constant snuffle you might hear, 
As if with him 't were winter all the year. 
At pew-head sat he with decorous pains, 
In sermon-time could foot his weekly gains, 
Or, with closed eyes and heaven-abstracted 

air, 
Could plan a new investment in long- 
prayer. 
A pious man, and thrifty too, he made 
The psalms and prophets partners in his 

trade, 
And in his orthodoxy straitened more 
As it enlarged the business at his store; 
He honored Moses, but, when gain he 

planned, 
Had his own notion of the Promised Land. 

" Soon as the winter made the sledding 
good, 
From far around the farmers hauled him 
wood, 



FITZ ADAM'S STORY 



419 



For all the trade had gathered 'neath his 

thumb. 
He paid in groceries and New England 

rum, 
Making two profits with a conscience 

clear, — 
Cheap all he bought, and all he paid with 

dear. 
With his own mete-wand measuring every 

load, 
Each somehow had diminished on the 

road; 
An honest cord in Jethro still would fail 
By a good foot upon the Deacon's scale, 
And, more to abate the price, his gimlet 

eye 
Would pierce to cat-sticks that none else 

could spy; 
Yet none dared grumble, for no farmer 

yet 
But New Year found him in the Deacon's 

debt. 

" While the first snow was mealy under 

feet, 
A team drawled creaking down Quompe- 

gan street. 
Two cords of oak weighed down the grind- 
ing sled, 
And cornstalk fodder rustled overhead; 
The oxen's muzzles, as they shouldered 

through, 
Were silver-fringed; the driver's own was 

blue 
As the coarse frock that swung below his 

knee. 
Behind his load for shelter waded he; 
His mittened hands now on his chest he 

beat, 
Now stamped the stiffened cowhides of his 

feet, 
Hushed as a ghost's; his armpit scarce 

could hold 
The walnut whipstock slippery-bright with 

cold. 
What wonder if, the tavern as he past, 
He looked and longed, and stayed his 

beasts at last, 
Who patient stood and veiled themselves 

in steam 
While he explored the bar-room's ruddy 

gleam ? 

" Before the fire, in want of thought 
profound, 



There sat a brother - townsman weather- 
bound: 

A sturdy churl, crisp-headed, bristly-eared, 

Red as a pepper; 'twixt coarse brows and 
beard 

His eyes lay ambushed, on the watch for 
fools, 

Clear, gray, and glittering like two bay- 
edged pools; 

A shifty creature, with a turn for fun, 

Could swap a poor horse for a better 
one, — 

He 'd a high-stepper always in his stall; 

Liked far and near, and dreaded there- 
withal. 

To him the in-comer, 'Perez, how d' ye 
do?' 

' Jest as I 'm mind to, Obed ; how do 
you ? ' 

Then, his eyes twinkling such swift gleams 
as run 

Along the levelled barrel of a gun 

Brought to his shoulder by a man you 
know 

Will bring his game down, he continued, 
1 So, 

I s'pose you 're haulin' wood ? But you 're 
too late ; 

The Deacon 's off; Old Splitfoot could n't 
wait; 

He made a bee-line las' night in the storm 

To where he won't need wood to keep him 
warm. 

'Fore this he 's treasurer of a fund to 
train 

Young imps as missionaries; hopes to gain 

That way a contract that he has in view 

For fireproof pitchforks of a pattern new. 

It must have tickled him, all drawbacks 
weighed, 

To think he stuck the Old One in a trade; 

His soul, to start with, was n't worth a 
carrot, 

And all he 'd left 'ould hardly serve to 
swear at.' 

" By this time Obed had his wits thawed 
out, 

And, looking at the other half in doubt, 

Took off his fox-skin cap to scratch his 
head, 

Donned it again, and drawled forth, c Mean 
he 's dead ? ' 

' Jesso; he's dead and t' other d that toi- 
lers 



420 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



With folks that never love a thing but 

dollars. 
He pulled up stakes last evening, fair and 

square, 
And ever since there 's been a row Down 

There. 
The minute the old chap arrived, you see, 
Comes the Boss-devil to him, and says 

he, 
" What are you good at ? Little enough, 

I fear; 
We callilate to make folks useful here." 
" Well," says old Bitters, " I expect I can 
Scale a fair load of wood with e'er a man." 
"Wood we don't deal in; but perhaps 

you '11 suit, 
Because we buy our brimstone by the foot: 
Here, take this measurin'-rod, as smooth as 

sin, 
And keep a reckonin' of what loads comes 

in. 
You '11 not want business, for we need a 

lot 
To keep the Yankees that you send us 

hot; 
At firin' up they 're barely half as spry 
As Spaniards or Italians, though they 're 

dry; 
At first we have to let the draught on 

stronger, 
But, heat 'em through, they seem to hold 

it longer." 

"'Bitters he took the rod, and pretty 
soon 

A teamster comes, whistling an ex-psalm 
tune. 

A likelier chap you would n't ask to see, 

No different, but his limp, from you or 
me ' — 

' No different, Perez ! Don't your mem- 
ory fail ? 

Why, where in thunder was his horns and 
tail?' 

' They 're only worn by some old-fashioned 
pokes; 

They mostly aim at looking just like folks. 

Sech things are scarce as queues and top- 
boots here; 

'T would spoil their usefulness to look too 
queer. 

Ef you could always know 'em when they 
come, 

They 'd get no purchase on you : now be 
mum. 



On come the teamster, smart as Davy 

Crockett, 
Jinglin' the red-hot coppers in his pocket, 
And clost behind, ('t was gold-dust, you 'd 

ha' sworn,) 
A load of sulphur yallower 'n seed-corn; 
To see it wasted as it is Down There 
Would make a Friction-Match Co. tear its 

hair ! 
" Hold on ! " says Bitters, " stop right 

where you be; 
You can't go in athout a pass from me." 
" All right," says t' other, " only step 

round smart; 
I must be home by noon-time with the 

cart." 
Bitters goes round it sharp-eyed as a rat, 
Then with a scrap of paper on his hat 
Pretends to cipher. " By the public staff, 
That load scarce rises twelve foot and a 

half." 
" There 's fourteen foot and over," says the 

driver, 
"Worth twenty dollars, ef it 's worth a 

stiver; 
Good fourth-proof brimstone, that '11 make 

'em squirm, — 
I leave it to the Headman of the Firm; 
After we masure it, we always lay 
Some on to allow for settlin' by the way. 
Imp and full-grown, I 've carted sulphur 

here, 
And gi'n fair satisfaction, thirty year." 
With that they fell to quarrellin' so loud 
That in five minutes they had drawed a 

crowd, 
And afore long the Boss, who heard the 

row, 
Comes elbowin' in with " What 's to pay 

here now ? " 
Both parties heard, the measurin'-rod he 

takes, 
And of the load a careful survey makes. 
" Sence I have bossed the business here," 

says he, 
" No fairer load was ever seen by me." 
Then, turnin' to the Deacon, "You mean 

cus, 
None of your old Quompegan tricks with 

us ! 
They won't do here: we 're plain old- 
fashioned folks, 
And don't quite understand that kind o' 



I know this teamster, and his pa afore him, 



THE ORIGIN OF DIDACTIC POETRY 



421 



And the hard-working Mrs. D. that bore 

hira; 
He would n't soil his conscience with a lie, 
Though he might get the custom-house 

thereby. 
Here, constable, take Bitters by the queue, 
And clap him into furnace ninety-two, 
And try this brimstone on him; if he 's 

bright, 
He '11 find the masure honest afore night. 
He is n't worth his fuel, and I '11 bet 
The parish oven has to take him yet ! " ' 

" This is my tale, heard twenty years 

ago 
From Uncle Reuben, as the logs burned 

low, 
Touching the walls and ceiling with that 

bloom 
That makes a rose's calyx of a room. 
I could not give his language, where- 
through ran 
The gamy flavor of the bookless man 
Who shapes a word before the fancy cools, 
As lonely Crusoe improvised his tools. 
I liked the tale, — 't was like so many told 
By Rutebeuf and his brother Trouveres 

bold; 
Nor were the hearers much unlike to 

theirs, 
Men unsophisticate, rude-nerved as bears. 
Ezra is gone and his large-hearted kind, 
The landlords of the hospitable mind; 
Good Warriner of Springfield was the last; 
An inn is now a vision of the past; 
One yet-surviving host my mind recalls, — 
You '11 find him if you go to Trenton 

Falls." 



THE ORIGIN OF DIDACTIC 
POETRY 

When wise Minerva still was young 

And just the least romantic, 
Soon after from Jove's head she flung 

That preternatural antic, 
'T is said, to keep from idleness 

Or flirting, those twin curses, 
She spent her leisure, more or less, 

In writing po , no, verses. 

How nice they were ! to rhyme with far 

A kind star did not tarry; 
The metre, too, was regular 

As schoolboy's dot and carry; 



And full they were of pious plums, 

So extra-super-moral, — 
For sucking Virtue's tender gums 

Most tooth-enticing coral. 

A clean, fair copy she prepares, 

Makes sure of moods and tenses, 
With her own hand, — for prudence spares 

A man-(or woman-)-uensis; 
Complete, and tied with ribbons proud, 

She hinted soon how cosy a 
Treat it would be to read them loud 

After next day's Ambrosia. 

The Gods thought not it would amuse 

So much as Homer's Odyssees, 
But could not very well refuse 

The properest of Goddesses; 
So all sat round in attitudes 

Of various dejection, 
As with a hem ! the queen of prudes 

Began her grave prelection. 

At the first pause Zeus said, "Well 
sung ! — 

I mean — ask Phoebus, — he knows." 
Says Phoebus, "Zounds ! a wolf 's among 

Admetus's merinos ! 
Fine ! very fine ! but I must go; 

They stand in need of me there; 
Excuse me ! " snatched his stick, and so 

Plunged down the gladdened ether. 

With the next gap, Mars said, " For me 

Don't wait, — naught could be finer, 
But I 'm engaged at half past three, — 

A fight in Asia Minor ! " 
Then Venus lisped, " I 'm sorely tried, 

These duty-calls are vip'rous; 
But I must go; I have a bride 

To see about in Cyprus." 

Then Bacchus, — "I must say good-by, 

Although my peace it jeopards; 
I meet a man at four, to try 

A well-broke pair of leopards." 
His words woke Hermes. " Ah ! " he said, 

" I so love moral theses ! " 
Then winked at Hebe, who turned red, 

And smoothed her apron's creases. 

Just then Zeus snored, — the Eagle drew 

His head the wing from under; 
Zeus snored, — o'er startled Greece there 
flew 



422 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



The many-volunied thunder. 
Some augurs counted nine, some, ten; 

Some said 't was war, some, famine, 
And all, that other-minded men 

Would get a precious . 

Proud Pallas sighed, "It will not do; 

Against the Muse I 've sinned, oh ! " 
And her torn rhymes sent flying through 

Olympus 's back window. 
Then, packing up a peplus clean, 

She took the shortest path thence, 
And opened, with a mind serene, 

A Sunday-school in Athens. 

The verses ? Some in ocean swilled, 

Killed every fish that bit to 'em; 
Some Galen caught, and, when distilled, 

Found morphine the residuum; 
But some that rotted on the earth 

Sprang up again in copies, 
And gave two strong narcotics birth, 

Didactic verse and poppies. 

Years after, when a poet asked 

The Goddess's opinion, 
As one whose soul its wings had tasked 

In Art's clear-aired dominion, 
" Discriminate," she said, " betimes ; 

The Muse is unforgiving; 
Put all your beauty in your rhymes, 

Your morals in your living." 



THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 

This poem appeared in The Atlantic for 
January, 1868, and Lowell's own criticism on 
it is frank. He wrote to Mr. Thayer : " You 
will find some verses of mine in the next At- 
lantic, the conception of which tickles me — 
but half spoiled (and in verse half is more 
than whole) in the writing ; " and in a similar 
vein he wrote to Mr. Fields, the editor : " The 
trouble with The Flying Dutchman is not in 
what I left out, but in what I could n't get in. 
Let us be honest with each other, my dear 
Lorenzo de' Medici, if we can't be with any- 
body else. The conception of the verses is 
good ; the verses are bad." 

Don't believe in the Flying Dutchman ? 

I 've known the fellow for years ; 
My button I Ve wrenched from his clutch, 
man: 

I shudder whenever he nears ! 



He 's a Rip van Winkle skipper, 

A Wandering Jew of the sea, 
Who sails his bedevilled old clipper 

In the wind's eye, straight as a bee. 

Back topsails ! you can't escape him; 

The man-ropes stretch with his weight, 
And the queerest old toggeries drape him, 

The Lord knows how long out of date ! 

Like a long-disembodied idea, 
(A kind of ghost plentiful now,) 

He stands there; you fancy you see a 
Coeval of Teniers or Douw. 

He greets you ; would have you take let- 
ters: 

You scan the addresses with dread, 
While he mutters his donners and wetters, — 

They 're all from the dead to the dead ! 

You seem taking time for reflection, 

But the heart fills your throat with a 
jam, 

As you spell in each faded direction 
An ominous ending in dam. 

Am I tagging my rhymes to a legend ? 
That were changing green turtle to 
mock: 
No, thank you ! I 've found out which 
wedge-end 
Is meant for the head of a block. 

The fellow I have in my mind's eye 

Plays the old Skipper's part here on 
shore, 

And sticks like a burr, till he finds I 
Have got just the gauge of his bore. 

This postman 'twixt one ghost and t' other, 
With last dates that smell of the mould, 

I have met him (O man and brother, 
Forgive me !) in azure and gold. 

In the pulpit I 've known of his preaching, 
Out of hearing behind the time, 

Some statement of Balaam's impeaching, 
Giving Eve a due sense of her crime. 

I have seen him some poor ancient thrash- 
ing 

Into something (God save us !) more dry, 
With the Water of Life itself washing 

The life out of earth, sea, and sky. 



CREDIDIMUS JOVEM REGNARE 



423 



O dread fellow-mortal, get newer 

Despatches to carry, or none ! 
We 're as quick as the Greek and the Jew 
were 

At knowing a loaf from a stone. 

Till the couriers of God fail in duty, 
We sha'n't ask a mummy for news, 

Nor sate the soul's hunger for beauty 
With your drawings from casts of a 
Muse. 



CREDIDIMUS JOVEM REGNARE 

O days endeared to every Muse, 
When nobody had any Views, 
Nor, while the cloudscape of his mind 
By every breeze was new designed, 
Insisted all the world should see 
Camels or whales where none there be ! 

happy days, when men received 
From sire to son what all believed, 
And left the other world in bliss, 
Too busy with bedevilling this ! 

Beset by doubts of every breed 
In the last bastion of my creed, 
With shot and shell for Sabbath-chime, 

1 watch the storming-party climb, 
Panting (their prey in easy reach), 

To pour triumphant through the breach 
In walls that shed like snowflakes tons 
Of missiles from old-fashioned guns, 
But crumble 'neath the storm that pours 
All day and night from bigger bores. 
There, as I hopeless watch and wait 
The last life-crushing coil of Fate, 
Despair finds solace in the praise 
Of those serene dawn-rosy days 
Ere microscopes had made us heirs 
To large estates of doubts and snares, 
By proving that the title-deeds, 
Once all-sufficient for men's needs, 
Are palimpsests that scarce disguise 
The tracings of still earlier lies, 
Themselves as surely written o'er 
An older fib erased before. 

So from these days I fly to those 
That in the landlocked Past repose, 
Where no rude wind of doctrine shakes 
From bloom -flushed boughs untimely 

flakes ; 
Where morning's eyes see nothing strange, 



No crude perplexity of change, 

And morrows trip along their ways 

Secure as happy yesterdays. 

Then there were rulers who could trace 

Through heroes up to gods their race, 

Pledged to fair fame and noble use 

By veins from Odin filled or Zeus, 

And under bonds to keep divine 

The praise of a celestial line. 

Then priests could pile the altar's sods, 

With whom gods spake as they with gods, 

And everywhere from haunted earth 

Broke springs of wonder, that had birth 

In depths divine beyond the ken 

And fatal scrutiny of men; 

Then hills and groves and streams and 

seas 
Thrilled with immortal presences, 
Not too ethereal for the scope 
Of human passion's dream or hope. 

Now Pan at last is surely dead, 

And King No- Credit reigns instead, 

Whose officers, morosely strict, 

Poor Fancy's tenantry evict, 

Chase the last Genius from the door, 

And nothing dances any more. 

Nothing ? Ah, yes, our tables do, 

Drumming the Old One's own tattoo, 

And, if the oracles are dumb, 

Have we not mediums ? Why be glum ? 

Fly thither ? Why, the very air 

Is full of hindrance and despair ! 

Fly thither ? But I cannot fly; 

My doubts enmesh me if I try, 

Each Liliputian, but, combined, 

Potent a giant's limbs to bind. 

This world and that are growing dark; 

A huge interrogation mark, 

The Devil's crook episcopal, 

Still borne before him since the Fall, 

Blackens with its ill-omened sign 

The old blue heaven of faith benign. 

Whence? Whither? Wherefore? How? 

Which ? Why ? 
All ask at once, all wait reply. 
Men feel old systems cracking under 'em; 
Life saddens to a mere conundrum 
Which once Religion solved, but she 
Has lost — has Science found ? — the key. 

What was snow-bearded Odin, trow, 

The mighty hunter long ago, 

Whose horn and hounds the peasant hears 



424 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



Still when the Northlights shake their 

spears ? 
Science hath answers twain, I've heard; 
Choose which you will, nor hope a third; 
Whichever box the truth be stowed in, 
There 's not a sliver left of Odin. 
Either he was a pinchbrowed thing, 
With scarcely wit a stone to fling, 
A creature both in size and shape 
Nearer than we are to the ape, 
Who hung sublime with brat and spouse 
By tail prehensile from the boughs, 
And, happier than his maimed descendants, 
The culture-curtailed independents, 
Could pluck his cherries with both paws, 
And stuff with both his big-boned jaws ; 
Or else the core his name enveloped 
Was from a solar myth developed, 
Which, hunted to its primal shoot, 
Takes refuge in a Sanskrit root, 
Thereby to instant death explaining 
The little poetry remaining. 

Try it with Zeus, 't is just the same; 
The thing evades, we hug a name; 
Nay, scarcely that, — perhaps a vapor 
Born of some atmospheric caper. 
All Lempriere's fables blur together 
In cloudy symbols of the weather, 
And Aphrodite rose from frothy seas 
But to illustrate such hypotheses. 
With years enough behind his back, 
Lincoln will take the selfsame track, 
And prove, hulled fairly to the cob, 
A mere vagary of Old Prob. 
Give the right man a solar myth, 
And he '11 confute the sun therewith. 

They make things admirably plain, 
But one hard question will remain : 
If one hypothesis you lose, 
Another in its place you choose, 
But, your faith gone, O man and brother, 
Whose shop shall furnish you another ? 
One that will wash, I mean, and wear, 
And wrap us warmly from despair ? 
While they are clearing up our puzzles, 
And clapping prophylactic muzzles 
On the Actseon's hounds that sniff 
Our devious track through But and If, 
Would they 'd explain away the Devil 
And other facts that won't keep level, 
But rise beneath our feet or fail, 
A reeling ship's deck in a gale ! 
God vanished long ago, iwis, 



A mere subjective synthesis; 

A doll, stuffed out with hopes and fears, 

Too homely for us pretty dears, 

Who want one that conviction carries, 

Last make of London or of Paris. 

He gone, I felt a moment's spasm, 

But calmed myself with Protoplasm, 

A finer name, and, what is more, 

As enigmatic as before ; 

Greek, too, and sure to fill with ease 

Minds caught in the Symplegades 

Of soul and sense, life's two conditions, 

Each baffled with its own omniscience. 

The men who labor to revise 

Our Bibles will, I hope, be wise, 

And print it without foolish qualms 

Instead of God in David's psalms: 

Noll had been more effective far 

Could he have shouted at Dunbar, 

" Rise, Protoplasm ! " No dourest Scot 

Had waited for another shot. 

And yet I frankly must confess 

A secret unforgivingness, 

And shudder at the saving chrism 

Whose best New Birth is Pessimism; 

My soul — I mean the bit of phosphorus 

That fills the place of what that was for 

us — 
Can't bid its inward bores defiance 
With the new nursery-tales of science. 
What profits me, though doubt by doubt, 
As nail by nail, be driven out, 
When every new one, like the last, 
Still holds my coffin-lid as fast ? 
Would I find thought a moment's truce, 
Give me the young world's Mother Goose 
With life and joy in every limb, 
The chimney-corner tales of Grimm ! 

Our dear and admirable Huxley 
Cannot explain to me why ducks lay, 
Or, rather, how into their eggs 
Blunder potential wings and legs 
With will to move them and decide 
Whether in air or lymph to glide. 
Who gets a hair's-breadth on by showing 
That Something Else set all agoing ? 
Farther and farther back we push 
From Moses and his burning bush; 
Cry, " Art Thou there ? " Above, be- 
low, 
All Nature mutters yes and no ! 
'T is the old answer: we 're agreed 
Being from Being must proceed, 



TEMPORA MUTANTUR 



425 



Life be Life's source. I might as well 
Obey the meeting-house's bell, 
And listen while Old Hundred pours 
Forth through the summer-opened doors, 
From old and young. I hear it yet, 
Swelled by bass-viol and clarinet, 
While the gray minister, with face 
Radiant, let loose his noble bass. 
If Heaven it reached not, yet its roll 
Waked all the echoes of the soul, 
And in it many a life found wings 
To soar away from sordid things. 
Church gone and singers too, the song 
Sings to me voiceless all night long, 
Till my soul beckons me afar, 
Glowing and trembling like a star. 
Will any scientific touch 
With my worn strings achieve as much ? 

I don't object, not I, to know 

My sires were monkeys, if 't was so ; 

I touch my ear's collusive tip 

And own the poor-relationship. 

That apes of various shapes and sizes 

Contained their germs that all the prizes 

Of senate, pulpit, camp, and bar win 

May give us hopes that sweeten Darwin. 

Who knows but from our loins may spring 

(Long hence) some winged sweet-throated 

thing 
As much superior to us 
As we to Cynocephalus ? 

This is consoling, but, alas, 
It wipes no dimness from the glass 
Where I am flattening my poor nose, 
In hope to see beyond my toes. 
Though I accept my pedigree, 
Yet where, pray tell me, is the key 
That should unlock a private door 
To the Great Mystery, such no more ? 
Each offers his, but one nor all 
Are much persuasive with the wall 
That rises now, as long ago, 
Between I wonder and I know, 
Nor will vouchsafe a pin-hole peep 
At the veiled Isis in its keep. 
Where is no door, I but produce 
My key to find it of no use. 
Yet better keep it, after all, 
nee Nature 's economical, 
. > nd who can tell but some fine day 
(if it occur to her) she may, 
In her good-will to you and me, 
Make door and lock to match the key ? 



TEMPORA MUTANTUR 

This poem, written not long after Lowell's 
return from a journey in Europe and printed 
in The Nation, called out many angry retorts. 
The reader will find a vigorous letter by Lowell 
to Mr. Joel Benton, restating his position, in 
The Century for November, 1891, and reprinted 
in Letters II. 155-160. 

The world turns mild; democracy, they 

say, 
Rounds the sharp knobs of character away, 
And no great harm, unless at grave ex- 
pense 
Of what needs edge of proof, the moral 

sense ; 
For man or race is on the downward path 
Whose fibre grows too soft for honest 

wrath, 
And there 's a subtle influence that springs 
From words to modify our sense of things. 
A plain distinction grows obscure of late : 
Man, if he will, may pardon; but the State 
Forgets its function if not fixed as Fate. 
So thought our sires : a hundred years 

ago, 
If men were knaves, why, people called 

them so, 
And crime could see the prison-portal 

bend 
Its brow severe at no long vista's end. 
In those days for plain things plain words 

would serve; 
Men had not learned to admire the graceful 

swerve 
Wherewith the iEsthetic Nature's genial 

mood 
Makes public duty slope to private good; 
No muddled conscience raised the saving" 

doubt; 
A soldier proved unworthy was drummed 

out, 
An officer cashiered, a civil servant 
(No matter though his piety were fervent) 
Disgracefully dismissed, and through the 

land 
Each bore for life a stigma from the brand 
Whose far-heard hiss made others more 

averse 
To take the facile step from bad to worse. 
The Ten Commandments had a meaning 

then, 
Felt in their bones by least considerate 



426 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



Because behind them Public Conscience 

stood, 
And without wincing made their mandates 

good. 
But now that "Statesmanship" is just a 

way 
To dodge the primal curse and make it 

P a 7> 
Since office means a kind of patent drill 
To force an entrance to the Nation's till, 
And peculation something rather less 
Risky than if you spelt it with an s • 
Now that to steal by law is grown an art, 
Whom rogues the sires, their milder sons 

call smart, 
And " slightly irregular " dilutes the shame 
Of what had once a somewhat blunter 

name. 
With generous curve we draw the moral 

line: 
Our swindlers are permitted to resign; 
Their guilt is wrapped in deferential names, 
And twenty sympathize for one that blames. 
Add national disgrace to private crime, 
Confront mankind with brazen front sub- 
lime, 
Steal but enough, the world is unsevere, — 
Tweed is a statesman, Fisk a financier; 
Invent a mine, and be — the Lord knows 

what; 
Secure, at any rate, with what you 've 

got. 
The public servant who has stolen or lied, 
If called on, may resign with honest pride: 
As unjust favor put him in, why doubt 
Disfavor as unjust has turned him out ? 
Even if indicted, what is that but fudge 
To him who counted-in the elective judge ? 
Whitewashed, he quits the politician's 

strife 
At ease in mind, with pockets filled for 

life: 
His " lady " glares with gems whose vul- 
gar blaze 
The poor man through his heightened taxes 

pays, 
Himself content if one huge Kohinoor 
Bulge from a shirt-front ampler than be- 
fore, 
But not too candid, lest it haply tend 
To rouse suspicion of the People's Friend. 
A public meeting, treated at his cost, 
Resolves him back more virtue than he 

lost; 
With character regilt he counts his gains; 



What 's gone was air, the solid good re- 
mains; 
For what is good, except what friend and 

foe 
Seem quite unanimous in thinking so, 
The stocks and bonds which, in our age of 

loans, 
Replace the stupid pagan's stocks and 

stones ? 
With choker white, wherein no cynic eye 
Dares see idealized a hempen tie, 
At parish-meetings he conducts in prayer, 
And pays for missions to be sent else- 
where; 
On 'Change respected, to his friends en- 
deared, 
Add but a Sunday-school-class, he 's re- 
vered, 
And his too early tomb will not be dumb 
To point a moral for our youth to come. 



IN THE HALF-WAY HOUSE 



At twenty we fancied the blest Middle 



A spirited cross of romantic and grand, 
All templars and minstrels and ladies and 
pages, 
And love and adventure in Outre-Mer 
land; 
But ah. where the youth dreamed of build- 
ing a minster, 
The man takes a pew and sits reckoning 
his pelf, 
And the Graces wear fronts, the Muse 
thins to a spinster, 
When Middle-Age stares from one's 
glass at oneself ! 



Do you twit me with days when I had an 
Ideal, 
And saw the sear future through spec- 
tacles green ? 
Then find me some charm, while I look 
round and see all 
These fat friends of forty, shall keep me 
nineteen; 
Should we go on pining for chaplets of 
laurel 
Who 've paid a perruquier for mending 
our thatch, 



AT THE BURNS CENTENNIAL 



427 



Or, our feet swathed in baize, with our 
Fate pick a quarrel, 
If, instead of cheap bay-leaves, she sent 
a dear scratch ? 



We called it our Eden, that small patent- 
baker, 
When life was half moonshine and half 
Mary Jane; 
But the butcher, the baker, the candlestick- 
maker ! — 
Did Adam have duns and slip down a 
back-lane ? 
Nay, after the Fall did the modiste keep 
coming 
With last styles of fig-leaf to Madam 
Eve's bower ? 
Did Jubal, or whoever taught the girls 
thrumming, 
Make the patriarchs deaf at a dollar the 
hour ? 



As I think what I was, I sigh Desunt non- 
nulla ! 
Years are creditors Sheridan's self could 
not bilk; 
But then, as my boy says, " What right has 
a f ullah 
To ask for the cream, when himself spilt 
the milk ? " 
Perhaps when you 're older, my lad, you '11 
discover 
The secret with which Auld Lang Syne 
there is gilt, — 
Superstition of old man, maid, poet, and 
lover, — 
That cream rises thickest on milk that 
was spilt ! 



We sailed for the moon, but, in sad disil- 
lusion, 
Snug under Point Comfort are glad to 
make fast, 
And strive (sans our glasses) to make a 
confusion 
'Twixt our rind of green cheese and the 
moon of the past. 
Ah, Might-have-been, Could-have-been, 
Would-have-been ! rascals, 
He 's a genius or fool whom ye cheat at 
two-score, 



And the man whose boy-promise was lik- 
ened to Pascal's 
Is thankful at forty they don't call him 
bore ! 



With what fumes of fame was each con- 
fident pate full ! 
How rates of insurance should rise on 
the Charles ! 
And which of us now would not feel wisely 
grateful, 
If his rhymes sold as fast as the Em- 
blems of Quarles ? 
E'en if won, what 's the good of Life's 
medals and prizes ? 
The rapture 's in what never was or is 
gone; 
That we missed them makes Helens of 
plain Ann Elizys, 
For the goose of To-day still is Mem- 
ory's swan. 



And yet who would change the old dream 
for new treasure ? 
Make not youth's sourest grapes the best 
wine of our life ? 
Need he reckon his date by the Almanac's 
measure 
Who is twenty life-long in the eyes of 
his wife ? 
Ah, Fate, should I live to be nonagenarian, 
Let me still take Hope's frail I. O. U.'s 
upon trust, 
Still talk of a trip to the Islands Macarian, 
And still climb the dream-tree for — 
ashes and dust ! 



AT THE BURNS CENTENNIAL 

JANUARY, 1859 

I 

A hundred years ! they 're quickly fled, 

With all their joy and sorrow; 
Their dead leaves shed upon the dead, 

Their fresh ones sprung by morrow ! 
And still the patient seasons bring 

Their change of sun and shadow; 
New birds still sing with every spring, 

New violets spot the meadow. 



428 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



A hundred years ! and Nature's powers 

No greater grown nor lessened ! 
They saw no flowers more sweet than 
ours, 

No fairer new moon's crescent. 
Would she but treat us poets so, 

So from our winter free us, 
And set our slow old sap aflow 

To sprout in fresh ideas ! 



Alas, think I, what worth or parts 

Have brought me here competing, 
To speak what starts in myriad hearts 

With Burns's memory beating ! 
Himself had loved a theme like this; 

Must I be its entomber ? 
No pen save his but 's sure to miss 

Its pathos or its humor. 



As I sat musing what to say, 

And how my verse to number, 
Some elf in play passed by that way, 

And sank my lids in slumber; 
And on my sleep a vision stole, 

Which I will put in metre, 
Of Burns's soul at the wicket-hole 

Where sits the good Saint Peter. 



The saint, methought, had left his post 

That day to Holy Willie, 
Who swore, " Each ghost that comes shall 
toast 

In brunstane, will he, nill he ; 
There 's nane need hope with phrases fine 

Their score to wipe a sin frae; 
I '11 chalk a sign, to save their tryin', — 

A hand (IfV) and ' Vide infra ! ' " 



Alas ! no soil 's too cold or dry 

For spiritual small potatoes, 
Scrimped natures, spry the trade to ply 

Of diaboli advocatus; 
Who lay bent pins in the penance-stool 

Where Mercy plumps a cushion, 
Who 've just one rule for knave and fool, 

It saves so much confusion ! 



So when Burns knocked, Will knit his 
brows, 

His window gap made scanter, 
And said, " Go rouse the other house ; 

We lodge no Tarn O'Shanter ! " 
" We lodge ! " laughed Burns. " Now well 
I see 

Death cannot kill old nature; 
No human flea but thinks that he 

May speak for his Creator ! 



" But, Willie, friend, don't turn me forth, 

Auld Clootie needs no gauger; 
And if on earth I had small worth, 

You 've let in worse I 'se wager ! " 
" Na, nane has knockit at the yett 

But found me hard as whunstane; 
There 's chances yet your bread to get 

Wi Auld Nick, gaugin' brunstane." 



Meanwhile, the Unco' Guid had ta'en 

Their place to watch the process, 
Flattening in vain on many a pane 

Their disembodied noses. 
Remember, please, 't is all a dream; 

One can't control the fancies 
Through sleep that stream with wayward 
gleam, 

Like midnight's boreal dances. 



Old Willie's tone grew sharp 's a knife: 

" In primis, I indite ye, 
For makin' strife wi' the water o' life, 

And pref errin' aqua vitm I " 
Then roared a voice with lusty din, 

Like a skipper's when 't is blowy, 
" If that 's a sin, I 'd ne'er got in, 

As sure as my name 's Noah ! " 



Baulked, Willie turned another leaf, — 

" There 's many here have heard ye, 
To the pain and grief o' true belief, 

Say hard things o' the clergy ! " 
Then rang a clear tone over all, — 

" One plea for him allow me : 
I once heard call from o'er me, ' Saul, 

Why persecutest thou me?'" 



AT THE BURNS CENTENNIAL 



429 



To the next charge vexed Willie turned, 

And, sighing, wiped his glasses: 
" I 'm much concerned to find ye yearned 

O'er-warmly tow'rd the lasses ! " 
Here David sighed ; poor Willie's face 

Lost all its self-possession: 
" I leave this case to God's own grace; 

It baffles my discretion ! " 



Then sudden glory round me broke, 

And low melodious surges 
Of wings whose stroke to splendor woke 

Creation's farthest verges; 
A cross stretched, ladder-like, secure 

From earth to heaven's own portal, 
Whereby God's poor, with footing sure, 

Climbed up to peace immortal. 



I heard a voice serene and low 

(With my heart I seemed to hear it,) 
Fall soft and slow as snow on snow, 

Like grace of the heavenly spirit; 
As sweet as over new-born son 

The croon of new-made mother, 
The voice begun, " Sore tempted one ! " 

Then, pausing, sighed, " Our brother ! 



" If not a sparrow fall, unless 

The Father sees and knows it, 
Think ! recks He less his form express, 

The soul his own deposit ? 
If only dear to Him the strong, 

That never trip nor wander, 
Where were the throng whose morning 
song 

Thrills his blue arches yonder ? 



" Do souls alone clear-eyed, strong-kneed, 

To Him true service render, 
And they who need his hand to lead, 

Find they his heart untender ? 
Through all your various ranks and fates 

He opens doors to duty, 
And he that waits there at your gates 

Was servant of his Beauty. 



" The Earth must richer sap secrete, 
(Could ye in time but know it !) 



Must juice concrete with fiercer heat, 
Ere she can make her poet ; 

Long generations go and come, 
At last she bears a singer, 

For ages dumb of senses numb 
The compensation-bringer ! 



" Her cheaper broods in palaces 

She raises under glasses, 
But souls like these, heav'n's hostages, 

Spring shelterless as grasses: 
They share Earth's blessing and her bane, 

The common sun and shower; 
What makes your pain to them is gain, 

Your weakness is their power. 



" These larger hearts must feel the rolls 

Of stormier-waved temptation; 
These star-wide souls between their poles 

Bear zones of tropic passion. 
He loved much ! — that is gospel good, 

Howe'er the text you handle; 
From common wood the cross was hewed, 

By love turned priceless sandal. 



" If scant his service at the kirk, 

He paters heard and aves 
From choirs that lurk in hedge and birk, 

From blackbird and from mavis; 
The cowering mouse, poor unroofed thing, 

In him found Mercy's angel; 
The daisy's ring brought every spring 

To him Love's fresh evangel ! 



" Not he the threatening texts who deals 

Is highest 'mong the preachers, 
But he who feels the woes and weals 

Of all God's wandering creatures. 
He doth good work whose heart can find 

The spirit 'neath the letter; 
Who makes his kind of happier mind, 

Leaves wiser men and better. 



" They make Eeligion be abhorred 
Who round with darkness gulf her, 

And think no word can please the Lord 
Unless it smell of sulphur. 

Dear Poet-heart, that childlike guessed 
The Father's loving kindness, 



43° 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



Come now to rest ! Thou didst his 
hest, 
If haply 't was in blindness ! " 



Then leapt heaven's portals wide apart, 

And at their golden thunder 
With sudden start I woke, my heart 

Still throbbing-full of wonder. 
" Father," I said, " 't is known to Thee 

How Thou thy Saints preparest; 
But this I see, — Saint Charity 

Is still the first and fairest ! " 



Dear Bard and Brother ! let who may 

Against thy faults be railing, 
(Though far, I pray, from us be they 

That never had a failing !) 
One toast I '11 give, and that not long, 

Which thou wouldst pledge if present, 
To him whose song, in nature strong, 

Makes man of prince and peasant ! 



IN AN ALBUM 

The misspelt scrawl, upon the wall 
By some Pompeian idler traced, 
In ashes packed (ironic fact !) 
Lies eighteen centuries uneffaced, 
While many a page of bard and sage, 
Deemed once mankind's immortal gain, 
Lost from Time's ark, leaves no more mark 
Than a keel's furrow through the main. 

O Chance and Change ! our buzz's range 
Is scarcely wider than a fly's ; 
Then let us play at fame to-day, 
To-morrow be unknown and wise; 
And while the fair beg locks of hair, 
And autographs, and Lord knows what, 
Quick ! let us scratch our moment's 

match, 
Make our brief blaze, and be forgot ! 

Too pressed to wait, upon her slate 
Fame writes a name or two in doubt ; 
Scarce written, these no longer please, 
And her own finger rubs them out: 
It may ensue, fair girl, that you 
Years hence this yellowing leaf may see, 
And put to task, your memory ask 
In vain, " This Lowell, who was he ? " 



AT THE COMMENCEMENT 
DINNER, 1866 

IN ACKNOWLEDGING A TOAST TO THE 
SMITH PROFESSOR 

I rise, Mr. Chairman, as both of us know, 
With the impromptu I promised you three 

weeks ago, 
Dragged up to my doom by your might 

and my mane, 
To do what I vowed I 'd do never again; 
And I feel like your good honest dough 

when possest 
By a stirring, impertinent devil of yeast. 
" You must rise," says the leaven. " I 

can't," says the dough; 
" Just examine my bumps, and you '11 see 

it 's no go." 
"But you must," the tormentor insists, 

" 't is all right; 
You must rise when I bid you, and, what 's 

more, be light." 

'T is a dreadful oppression, this making 

men speak 
What they 're sure to be sorry for all the 

next week; 
Some poor stick requesting, like Aaron's, 

to bud 
Into eloquence, pathos, or wit in cold blood, 
As if the dull brain that you vented your 

spite on 
Could be got, like an ox, by mere poking, 

to Brighton. 

They say it is wholesome to rise with the 

sun, 
And I dare say it may be if not over- 
done; 
(I think it was Thomson who made the 

remark 
'T was an excellent thing in its way — for 

a lark;) 
But to rise after dinner and look down the 

meeting 
On a distant (as Gray calls it) prospect of 

Eating, 
With a stomach half full and a cerebrum 

hollow 
As the tortoise-shell ere it was strung for 

Apollo, 
Under contract to raise anerithmon gelasma 



AT THE COMMENCEMENT DINNER, 1866 



43i 



With rhymes so hard hunted they gasp with 

the asthma, 
And jokes not much younger than Jethro's 

phylacteries, 
Is something I leave you yourselves to 

characterize. 

I've a notion, I think, of a good dinner 

speech, 
Tripping light as a sandpiper over the 

beach, 
Swerving this way and that as the wave of 

the moment 
Washes out its slight trace with a dash of 

whim's foam on 't, 
And leaving on memory's rim just a sense 
Something graceful had gone by, a live 

present tense; 
Not poetry, — no, not quite that, but as 

good, 
A kind of winged prose that could fly if it 

would. 
'T is a time for gay fancies as fleeting and 

vain 
As the whisper of foam-beads on fresh- 
poured champagne, 
Since dinners were not perhaps strictly 

designed 
For manoeuvring the heavy dragoons of the 

mind. 
When I hear your set speeches that start 

with a pop, 
Then wander and maunder, too feeble to 

stop, 
With a vague apprehension from popular 

rumor 
There used to be something by mortals 

called humor, 
Beginning again when you thought they 

were done, 
Respectable, sensible, weighing a ton, 
And as near to the present occasions of 

men 
As a Fast Day discourse of the year eighteen 

ten, 
I — well, I sit still, and my sentiments 

smother, 
For am I not also a bore and a brother ? 

And a toast, — what should that be ? Light, 

airy, and free, 
The foam-Aphrodite of Bacchus's sea, 
A fancy-tinged bubble, an orbed rainbow- 
stain, 



That floats for an instant 'twixt goblet and 

brain; 
A breath-born perfection, half something, 

half naught, 
And breaks if it strike the hard edge of a 

thought. 
Do you ask me to make such ? Ah no, 

not so simple; 
Ask Apelles to paint you the ravishing 

dimple 
Whose shifting enchantment lights Venus's 

cheek, 
And the artist will tell you his skill is to 

seek; 
Once fix it, 't is naught, for the charm of 

it rises 
From the sudden bopeeps of its smiling 

surprises. 

I 've tried to defir? it, but what mother's 

son 
Could ever yet do what he knows should 

be done ? 
My rocket has burst, and I watch in the air 
Its fast-fading heart's-blood drop back in 

despair; 
Yet one chance is left me, and, if I am 

quick, 
I can palm off, before you suspect me, the 

stick. 

Now since I 've succeeded — I pray do not 
frown — 

To Ticknor's and Longfellow's classical 
gown, 

And profess four strange languages, which, 
luckless elf, 

I speak like a native (of Cambridge) my- 
self, 

Let me beg, Mr. President, leave to propose 

A sentiment treading on nobody's toes, 

And give, in such ale as with pump-handles 
we brew, 

Their memory who saved us from all talk- 
ing Hebrew, — 

A toast that to deluge with water is good, 

For in Scripture they come in just after 
the flood: 

I give you the men but for whom, as I 
guess, sir, 

Modern languages ne'er could have had a 
professor, 

The builders of Babel, to whose zeal the 
lungs 



43 2 



HEARTSEASE AND RUE 



Of the children of men owe confusion of 
tongues ; 

And a name all-embracing I couple there- 
with, 

Which is that of my founder — the late 
Mr. Smith. 



A PARABLE 

An ass munched thistles, while a nightin- 
gale 
From passion's fountain flooded all the 

vale. 
" Hee-haw ! " cried he, " I hearken," as 

who knew 
For such ear-largess humble thanks were 

due. 
" Friend," said the winged pain, " in vain 

you bray, 
Who tunnels bring, not cisterns, for my 

lay; p 
None but his peers the poet rightly hear, 
Nor mete we listeners by their length of 

ear." 



V. EPIGRAMS 
SAYINGS 



In life's small things be resolute and great 
To keep thy muscle trained: know'st thou 

when Fate 
Thy measure takes, or when she '11 say to 

thee, 
" I find thee worthy ; do this deed for me " ? 



A camel-driver, angry with his drudge, 
Beating him, called him hunchback; to the 

hind 
Thus spake a dervish: "Friend, the Eternal 

Judge 
Dooms not his work, but ours, the crooked 

mind." 



Swiftly the politic goes : is it dark ? — he 

borrows a lantern; 
Slowly the statesman and sure, guiding his 

steps by the stars. 



"Where lies the capital, pilgrim, seat of 
who governs the Faithful ? " 

" Thither my footsteps are bent: it is where 
Saadi is lodged." 



INSCRIPTIONS 

FOR A BELL AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY 

I call as fly the irrevocable hours, 

Futile as air or strong as fate to make 
Your lives of sand or granite; awful 

powers, 
Even as men choose, they either give or 

take. 

FOR A MEMORIAL WINDOW TO SIR WAL- 
TER RALEIGH, SET UP IN ST. MARGA- 
RET'S, WESTMINSTER, BY AMERICAN 
CONTRIBUTORS 

The New World's sons, from England's 
breasts we drew 
Such milk as bids remember whence we 
came; 
Proud of her Past, wherefrom our Present 
grew, 
This window we inscribe with Raleigh's 
name. 

PROPOSED FOR A SOLDIERS' AND SAIL- 
ORS' MONUMENT IN BOSTON 

To those who died for her on land and 
sea, , 

That she might have a country great and 
free, 

Boston builds this : build ye her monument 

In lives like theirs, at duty's summons 
spent. 



A MISCONCEPTION 

B, taught by Pope to do his good by 
stealth, 

'Twixt participle and noun no difference 
feeling, 

In office placed to serve the Commonwealth, 

Does himself all the good he can by steal- 
ing. 



THE ORACLE OF THE GOLDFISHES 



433 



THE BOSS 

Skilled to pull wires, he baffles Nature's 

hope, 
"Who sure intended him to stretch a rope. 



SUN-WORSHIP 

If I were the rose at your window, 

Happiest rose of its crew, 

Every blossom I bore would bend 

ward, 
They 'd know where the sunshine grew. 



CHANGED PERSPECTIVE 

Full oft the pathway to her door 
I 've measured by the selfsame track, 
Yet doubt the distance more and more, 
'T is so much longer coming back ! 



WITH A PAIR OF GLOVES LOST 
IN A WAGER 

We wagered, she for sunshine, I for rain, 
And I should hint sharp practice if I 

dared; 
For was not she beforehand sure to gain 
Who made the sunshine we together shared? 

SIXTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY 

As life runs on, the road grows strange 
With faces new, and near the end 
The milestones into headstones change, 
'Neath every one a friend. 

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT 

In vain we call old notions fudge, 

And bend our conscience to our dealing ; 

The Ten Commandments will not budge, 
And stealing will continue stealing. 



LAST POEMS 



The following note was prefixed to this 
group when published in 1895 : " This little 
volume contains those of the poems which Mr. 
Lowell wrote in his last years which, I believe, 



he might have wished to preserve. Three 
of them were published before his death. Of 
the rest, two appear here for the first time. 
C. E. N." 



HOW I CONSULTED THE ORACLE 
OF THE GOLDFISHES 

What know we of the world immense 
Beyond the narrow ring of sense ? 
What should we know, who lounge about 
The house we dwell in, nor find out, 
Masked by a wall, the secret cell 
Where the soul's priests in hiding dwell ? 
The winding stair that steals aloof 
To chapel-mysteries 'neath the roof ? 

It lies about us, yet as far 

From sense sequestered as a star 

New launched its wake of fire to trace 

In secrecies of unprobed space, 

Whose beacon's lightning-pinioned spears 

Might earthward haste a thousand years 

Nor r^ch it. So remote seems this 

WorJd undiscovered, yet it is 

A aeigbbor near and dumb as death, 

So near, we seem to feel the breath 



Of its hushed habitants as they 
Pass us unchallenged, night and day. 

Never could mortal ear nor eye 
By sound or sign suspect them nigh, 
Yet why may not some subtler sense 
Than those poor two give evidence ? 
Transfuse the ferment of their being 
Into our own, past hearing, seeing, 
As men, if once attempered so, 
Far off each other's thought can know ? 
As horses with an instant thrill 
Measure their rider's strength of will ? 
Comes not to all some glimpse that brings 
Strange sense of sense-escaping things ? 
Wraiths some transfigured nerve divines ? 
Approaches, premonitions, signs, 
Voices of Ariel that die out 
In the dim No Man's Land of Doubt ? 

Are these Night's dusky birds ? Are these 
Phantasmas of the silences 



434 



LAST POEMS 



Outer or inner ? — rude heirlooms 
From grovellers in the cavern-glooms, 
Who in unhuman Nature saw 
Misshapen foes with tusk and claw, 
And with those night-fears brute and blind 
Peopled the chaos of their mind, 
Which, in ungovernable hours, 
Still make their bestial lair in ours ? 

Were they, or were they not ? Yes; 

no; 
Uncalled they come, unbid they go, 
And leave us fumbling in a doubt 
Whether within us or without 
The spell of this illusion be 
That witches us to hear and see 
As in a twi-life what it will, 
And hath such wonder-working skill 
That what we deemed most solid-wrought 
Turns a mere figment of our thought, 
Which when we grasp at in despair 
Our fingers find vain semblance there, 
For Psyche seeks a corner-stone 
Firmer than aught to matter known. 

Is it illusion ? Dream-stuff ? Show 

Made of the wish to have it so ? 

'T were something, even though this were 

all: 
So the poor prisoner, on his wall 
Long gazing, from the chance designs 
Of crack, mould, weather-stain, refines 
New and new pictures without cease, 
Landscape, or saint, or altar-piece : 
But these are Fancy's common brood 
Hatched in the nest of solitude; 
This is Dame Wish's hourly trade, 
By our rude sires a goddess made. 
Could longing, though its heart broke, give 
Trances in which we chiefly live ? 
Moments that darken all beside, 
Tearfully radiant as a bride ? 
Beckonings of bright escape, of wings 
Purchased with loss of baser things ? 
Blithe truancies from all control 
Of Hyle, outings of the soul ? 

The worm, by trustful instinct led, 
Draws from its womb a slender thread, 
And drops, confiding that the breeze 
Will waft it to unpastured trees: 
So the brain spins itself, and so 
Swings boldly off in hope to blow 
Across some tree of knowledge, fair 



With fruitage new, none else shall share: 

Sated with wavering in the Void, 

It backward climbs, so best employed, 

And, where no proof is nor can be, 

Seeks refuge with Analogy; 

Truth's soft half-sister, she may tell 

Where lurks, seld-sought, the other's well, 

With metaphysic midges sore, 

My Thought seeks comfort at her door, 

And, at her feet a suppliant cast, 

Evokes a spectre of the past. 

Not such as shook the knees of Saul, 

But winsome, golden-gay withal, — 

Two fishes in a globe of glass, 

That pass, and waver, and re-pass, 

And lighten that way, and then this, 

Silent as meditation is. 

With a half -humorous smile I see 

In this their aimless industry, 

These errands nowhere and returns 

Grave as a pair of funeral urns, 

This ever-seek and never-find, 

A mocking image of my mind. 

But not for this I bade you climb 

Up from the darkening deeps of time: 

Help me to tame these wild day-mares 

That sudden on me unawares. 

Fish, do your duty, as did they 

Of the Black Island far away 

In life's safe places, — far as you 

From all that now I see or do. 

You come, embodied flames, as when 

I knew you first, nor yet knew men; 

Your gold renews my golden days, 

Your splendor all my loss repays. 

'T is more than sixty years ago 
Since first I watched your to-and-fro^ 
Two generations come and gone 
From silence to oblivion, 
With all their noisy strife and stress 
Lulled in the grave's forgivingness, 
While you unquenchably survive 
Immortal, almost more alive. 
I watched you then a curious boy, 
Who in your beauty found full joy, 
And, by no problem-debts distrest, 
Sate at life's board a welcome guest. 
You were my sister's pets, not mine^ 
But Property's dividing line 
No hint of dispossession drew 
On any map my simplesse knew; 
O golden age, not yet dethroned! 
What made me happy, that I owned; 



IKE ORACLE OF THE GOLDFISHES 



435 



You were my wonders, you my Lars, 

In darkling days my sun and stars, 

And over you entranced I hung, 

Too young to know that I was young. 

Gazing with still unsated bliss, 

My fancies took some shape like this: 

" I have my world, and so have you, 

A tiny universe for two, 

A bubble by the artist blown, 

Scarcely more fragile than our own, 

Where you have all a whale could wish, 

Happy as Eden's primal fish. 

Manna is dropt you thrice a day 

From some kind heaven not far away, 

And still you snatch its softening crumbs, 

Nor, more than we, think whence it comes. 

No toil seems yours but to explore 

.Your cloistered realm from shore to shore; 

Sometimes you trace its limits round, 

Sometimes its limpid depths you sound, 

Or hover motionless midway, 

Like gold-red clouds at set of day; 

Erelong you whirl with sudden whim 

Off to your globe's most distant rim, 

Where, greatened by the watery lens, 

Methinks no dragon of the fens 

Flashed huger scales against the sky, 

Roused by Sir Bevis or Sir Guy, 

And the one eye that meets my view, 

Lidless and strangely largening, too, 

Like that of conscience in the dark, 

Seems to make me its single mark. 

What a benignant lot is yours 

That have an own All-out-of-doors, 

No words to spell, no sums to do, 

No Nepos and no parlyvoo ! 

How happy you without a thought 

Of such cross things as Must and Ought, — 

I too the happiest of boys 

To see and share your golden joys ! " 

So thought the child, in simpler words, 
Of you his finny flocks and herds ; 
Now, an old man, I bid you rise 
To the fine sight behind the eyes, 
And, lo, you float and flash again 
In the dark cistern of my brain. 
But o'er your visioned flames I brood 
With other mien, in other mood ; 
You are no longer there to please, 
But to stir argument, and tease 
My thought with all the ghostly shapes 
From which no moody man escapes. 



Diminished creature, I no more 
Find Fairyland beside my door, 
But for each moment's pleasure pay 
With the quart d'heure of Rabelais ! 

I watch you in your crystal sphere, 

And wonder if you see and hear 

Those shapes and sounds that stir the wide 

Conjecture of the world outside; 

In your pent lives, as we in ours, 

Have you surmises dim of powers, 

Of presences obscurely shown, 

Of lives a riddle to your own, 

Just on the senses' outer verge, 

Where sense-nerves into soul-nerves merge, 

Where we conspire our own deceit 

Confederate in deft Fancy's feat, 

And the fooled brain befools the eyes 

With pageants woven of its own lies ? 

But are they lies ? Why more than those 

Phantoms that startle your repose, 

Half seen, half heard, then flit away, 

And leave you your prose-bounded day ? 

The things ye see as shadows I 

Know to be substance; tell me why 

My visions, like those haunting you, 

May not be as substantial too. 

Alas, who ever answer heard 

From fish, and dream-fish too ? Absurd ! 

Your consciousness I half divine, 

But you are wholly deaf to mine. 

Go, I dismiss you; ye have done 

All that ye could; our silk is spun: 

Dive back into the deep of dreams, 

Where what is real is what seems ! 

Yet I shall fancy till my grave 

Your lives to mine a lesson gave ; 

If lesson none, an image, then, 

Impeaching self-conceit in men 

Who put their confidence alone 

In what they call the Seen and Known. 

How seen ? How known ? As through 

your glass 
Our wavering apparitions pass 
Perplexingly, then subtly wrought 
To some quite other thing by thought. 
Here shall my resolution be: 
The shadow of the mystery 
Is haply wholesomer for eyes 
That cheat us to be overwise, 
And I am happy in my right 
To love God's darkness as His light. 



43 6 



LAST POEMS 



TURNER'S OLD TfiMfiRAIRE 

UNDER A FIGURE SYMBOLIZING THE 
CHURCH 

Thou wast the fairest of all man-made 

things; 
The breath of heaven bore up thy cloudy 

wings, 
And, patient in their triple rank, 
The thunders crouched about thy flank, 
Their black lips silent with the doom of 

kings. 

The storm-wind loved to rock him in thy 

pines, 
And swell thy vans with breath of great 

designs ; 
Long-wildered pilgrims of the main 
By thee relaid their course again, 
Whose prow was guided by celestial signs. 

How didst thou trample on tumultuous 
seas, 

Or, like some basking sea-beast stretched 
at ease, 

Let the bull-fronted surges glide 

Caressingly along thy side, 

Like glad hounds leaping by the hunts- 
man's knees ! 

Heroic feet, with fire of genius shod, 
In battle's ecstasy thy deck have trod, 
While from their touch a f ulgor ran 
Through plank and spar, from man to 

man, 
Welding thee to a thunderbolt of God. 

Now a black demon, belching fire and 

steam, 
Drags thee away, a pale, dismantled 

dream, 
And all thy desecrated bulk 
Must landlocked lie, a helpless hulk, 
To gather weeds in the regardless stream. 

Woe 's me, from Ocean's sky-horizoned 

air 
To this ! Better, the flame-cross still 

aflare, 
Shot-shattered to have met thy doom 
Where thy last lightnings cheered the 

gloom, 
Than here be safe in dangerless despair. 



Thy drooping symbol to the flagstaff 

clings, 
Thy rudder soothes the tide to lazy rings, 
Thy thunders now but birthdays greet, 
Thy planks forget the martyrs' feet, 
Thy masts what challenges the sea-wind 

brings. 

Thou a mere hospital, where human 

wrecks, 
Like winter-flies, crawl those renowned 

decks, 
Ne'er trodden save by captive foes, 
And wonted sternly to impose 
God's will and thine on bowed imperial 

necks ! 

Shall nevermore, engendered of thy fame, 
A new sea-eagle heir thy conqueror name, 
And with commissioned talons wrench 
From thy supplanter's grimy clench 
His sheath of steel, his wings of smoke 
and flame ? 

This shall the pleased eyes of our children 

see; 
For this the stars of God long even as 

we; 
Earth listens for his wings; the Fates 
Expectant lean; Faith cross-propt waits, 
And the tired waves of Thought's insur- 
gent sea. 



ST. MICHAEL THE WEIGHER 

Stood the tall Archangel weighing 
All man's dreaming, doing, saying, 
All the failure and the pain, 
All the triumph and the gain, 
In the unimagined years, 
Full of hopes, more full of tears, 
Since old Adam's hopeless eyes 
Backward searched for Paradise, 
And, instead, the flame-blade saw 
Of inexorable Law. 

Waking, I beheld him there, 
With his fire-gold, flickering hair, 
In his blinding armor stand, 
And the scales were in his hand: 
Mighty were they, and full well 
They could poise both heaven and hell. 
" Angel," asked I humbly then, 
" Weighest thou the souls of men ? 



AN APRIL BIRTHDAY — AT SEA 



437 



That thine office is, I know." 


That, in the years I yet shall see, 


" Nay," he answered, me, " not so; 


As, darling, in the past, thou 'It be 


But I weigh the hope of Man 


My happy Valentine. 


Since the power of choice began, 




In the world, of good or ill." 




Then I waited and was still. 






AN APRIL BIRTHDAY — AT SEA 


In one scale I saw him place 




All the glories of our race, 


On this wild waste, where never blossom 


Cups that lit Belshazzar's feast, 


came, 


Gems, the lightning of the East, 


Save the white wind-flower in the billow's 


Kublai's sceptre, Csesar's sword, 


cap, 


Many a poet's golden word, 


Or those pale disks of momentary flame, 


Many a skill of science, vain 


Loose petals dropped from Dian's care- 


To make men as gods again. 


less lap, 




What far fetched influence all my fancy 


In the other scale he threw 


fills, 


Things regardless, outcast, few, 


With singing birds and dancing daffo- 


Martyr-ash, arena sand, 


dils ? 


Of St. Francis' cord a strand, 




Beechen cups of men whose need 


Why, 't is her day whom jocund April 


Fasted that the poor might feed, 


brought, 


Disillusions and despairs 


And who brings April with her in her 


Of young saints with grief-grayed hairs, 


eyes; 


Broken hearts that brake for Man. 


It is her vision lights my lonely thought, 




Even as a rose that opes its hushed sur- 


Marvel through my pulses ran 


prise 


Seeing then the beam divine 


In sick men's chambers, with its glow- 


Swiftly on this hand decline, 


ing breath 


While Earth's splendor and renown 


Plants Summer at the glacier edge of 


Mounted light as thistle-down. 


Death. 




Gray sky, sea gray as mossy stones on 


A VALENTINE 


graves ; — 




Anon comes April in her jollity; 


Let others wonder what fair face 


And dancing down the bleak vales 'tween 


Upon their path shall shine, 


the waves, 


And, fancying half, half hoping, trace 


Makes them green glades for all her 


Some maiden shape of tenderest grace 


flowers and me. 


To be their Valentine. 


The gulls turn thrushes, charmed are 




sea and sky 


Let other hearts with tremor sweet 


By magic of my thought, and know 


One secret wish enshrine 


not why. 


That Fate may lead their happy feet 




Fair Julia in the lane to meet 


Ah, but I know, for never April's shine, 


To be their Valentine. 


Nor passion gust of rain, nor all her 




flowers 


But I, far happier, am secure; 


Scattered in haste, were seen so sudden 


I know the eyes benign, 


fine 


The face more beautiful and pure 


As she in various mood, on whom the 


Than Fancy's fairest portraiture 


powers 


That mark my Valentine. 


Of happiest stars in fair conjunction 




smiled 


More than when first I singled thee, 


To bless the birth of April's darling 


This only prayer is mine, — 


child. 



438 



LAST POEMS 



LOVE AND THOUGHT 

What hath Love with Thought to do 1 
Still at variance are the two. 
Love is sudden, Love is rash, 
Love is like the levin flash, 
Comes as swift, as swiftly goes, 
And his mark as surely knows. 

Thought is lumpish, Thought is slow, 
Weighing long 'tween yes and no; 
When dear Love is dead and gone, 
Thought comes creeping in anon, 
And, in his deserted nest, 
Sits to hold the crowner's quest. 

Since we love, what need to think ? 
Happiness stands on a brink 
Whence too easy 't is to fall 
Whither 's no return at all ; 
Have a care, half-hearted lover, 
Thought would only push her over ! 



THE NOBLER LOVER 

If he be a nobler lover, take him ! 
\ You in you I seek, and not myself; 
Love with men 's what women choose to 
make him, 
Seraph strong to soar, or fawn-eyed elf: 
All I am or can, your beauty gave it, 
Lifting me a moment nigh to you, 
And my bit of heaven, I fain would save 
it— 
Mine I thought it was, I never knew. 

What you take of me is yours to serve 
you, 
All I give, you gave to me before ; 
Let him win you ! If I but deserve you, 
I keep all you grant to him and more : 
You shall make me dare what others dare 
not, 
You shall keep my nature pure as snow, 
And a light from you that others share 
not 
Shall transfigure me where'er I go. 

Let me be your thrall ! However lowly 
Be the bondsman's service I can do, 

Loyalty shall make it high and holy; 
Naught can be unworthy, done for you. 



Men shall say, " A lover of this fashion 
Such an icy mistress well beseems." 

Women say, " Could we deserve such pas- 
sion, 
We might be the marvel that he dreams." 



ON HEARING A SONATA OF 
BEETHOVEN'S PLAYED IN 
THE NEXT ROOM 

Unseen Musician, thou art sure to please, 
For those same notes in happier days I 
heard 
Poured by dear hands that long have never 
stirred 
Yet now again for me delight the keys : 
Ah me, to strong illusions such as these 
What are Life's solid things? The 
walls that gird 
Our senses, lo, a casual scent or word 
Levels, and 't is the soul that hears and 
sees ! 
Play on, dear girl, and many be the years 
Ere some grayhaired survivor sit like 
me 
And, for thy largess pay a meed of tears 

Unto another who, beyond the sea 
Of Time and Change, perhaps not sadly 
hears 
A music in this verse undreamed by 
thee ! 

VERSES 

INTENDED TO GO WITH A POSSET DISH 
TO MY DEAR LITTLE GODDAUGHTER, 
1882 

It is of interest to know that the goddaugh- 
ter was a child of Leslie Stephen. 

In good old times, which means, you know, 
The time men wasted long ago, 
And we must blame our brains or mood 
If that we squander seems less good, 
In those blest days when wish was act 
And fancy dreamed itself to fact, 
Godfathers used to fill with guineas 
The cups they gave their pickaninnies, 
Performing functions at the chrism 
Not mentioned in the Catechism. 
No millioner, poor I fill up 
With wishes my more modest cup, 
Though had I Amalthea's horn 



ON A BUST OF GENERAL GRANT 



439 



It should be hers the newly born. 
Nay, shudder not ! I should bestow it 
So brimming full she could n't blow it. 
"Wishes are n't horses: true, but still 
There are worse roadsters than goodwill. 
And so I wish my darling health, 
And just to round my couplet, wealth, 
With faith enough to bridge the chasm 
'Twixt Genesis and Protoplasm, 
And bear her o'er life's current vext 
From this world to a better next, 
Where the full glow of God puts out 
Poor reason's farthing candle, Doubt. 
I've wished her healthy, wealthy, wise, 
What more can godfather devise ? 
But since there 's room for countless wishes 
In these old-fashioned posset dishes, 
I '11 wish her from my plenteous store 
Of those commodities two more, 
Her father's wit, veined through and 

through 
With tenderness that Watts (but whew ! 
Celia 's aflame, I mean no stricture 
On his Sir Josh-surpassing picture) — 
I wish her next, and 't is the soul 
Of all I 've dropt into the bowl, 
Her mother's beauty — nay, but two 
So fair at once would never do. 
Then let her but the half possess, 
Troy was besieged ten years for less. 
Now if there 's any truth in Darwin, 
And we from what was, all we are win, 
I simply wish the child to be 
A sample of Heredity, 
Enjoying to the full extent 
Life's best, the Unearned Increment 
Which Fate her Godfather to flout 
Gave him in legacies of gout. 
Thus, then, the cup is duly filled; 
Walk steady, dear, lest all be spilled. 

ON A BUST OF GENERAL GRANT 

" This poem is the last, so far as is known, 
written by Mr. Lowell. He laid it aside for 
revision, leaving 1 two of the verses incomplete. 
In a pencilled fragment of the poem the first 
verse appears as follows : — 

'Strong, simple, silent, such are Nature's Laws.' 

In the final copy, from which the poem is now 
printed, the verse originally stood : — 

' Strong, steadfast, silent are the laws.' 

but ' steadfast ' is crossed out, and ' simple ' 
written above. 



"A similar change is made in the ninth 
verse of the stanza, where ' simpleness ' is sub- 
stituted for ' steadfastness.' The change from 
' steadfast ' to ' simple ' was not made, prob- 
ably through oversight, in the first verse of the 
second stanza. There is nothing to indicate 
what epithet Mr. Lowell would have chosen 
to complete the first verse of the third stanza. 
C. E. N." 

Strong, simple, silent are the [steadfast] 

laws 
That sway this universe, of none withstood, 
Unconscious of man's outcries or applause, 
Or what man deems his evil or his good; 
And when the Fates ally them with a cause 
That wallows in the sea-trough and seems 

lost, 
Drifting in danger of the reefs and sands 
Of shallow counsels, this way, that way, 

tost, 
Strength, silence, simpleness, of these three 

strands 
They twist the cable shall the world hold 

fast 
To where its anchors clutch the bed-rock of 

the Past. 

Strong, simple, silent, therefore such was 

he 
Who helped us in our need ; the eternal law 
That who can saddle Opportunity 
Is God's elect, though many a mortal flaw 
May minish him in eyes that closely see, 
Was verified in him: what need we say 
Of one who made success where others 

failed, 
Who, with no light save that of common 

day, 
Struck hard, and still struck on till For- 
tune quailed, 
But that (so sift the Norns) a desperate 

van 
Ne'er fell at last to one who was not wholly 
man. 

A face all prose where Time's [benignant] 

haze 
Softens no raw edge yet, nor makes all fair 
With the beguiling light of vanished days; 
This is relentless granite, bleak and bare, 
Roughhewn, and scornful of aesthetic 

phrase ; 
Nothing is here for fancy, naught for 

dreams, 
The Present's hard uncompromising light 



440 



LAST POEMS 



Accents all vulgar outlines, flaws, and 

seams, 
Yet vindicates some pristine natural right 
O'ertopping that hereditary grace 
Which marks the gain or loss of some time- 
fondled race. 

So Marius looked, methinks, and Crom- 
well so, 
Not in the purple born, to those they led 
Nearer for that and costlier to the foe, 
New moulders of old forms, by nature 

bred 
The exhaustless life of manhood's seeds to 

show, 
Let but the ploughshare of portentous 

times 
Strike deep enough to reach them where 

they lie: 
Despair and danger are their fostering 

climes, 
And their best sun bursts from a stormy 

sky: 
He was our man of men, nor would abate 
The utmost due manhood could claim of 

fate. 

Nothing ideal, a plain-people's man 

At the first glance, a more deliberate ken 

Finds type primeval, theirs in whose veins 



Such blood as quelled the dragon in his 

den, 
Made harmless fields, and better worlds 

began: 
He came grim-silent, saw and did the deed 
That was to do; in his master-grip 
Our sword flashed joy; no skill of words 

could breed 
Such sure conviction as that close-clamped 

lip; 
He slew our dragon, nor, so seemed it, 

knew 
He had done more than any simplest man 

might do. 

Yet did this man, war-tempered, stern as 

steel 
Where steel opposed, prove soft in civil 

sway; 
The hand hilt-hardened had lost tact to 

feel 
The world's base coin, and glozing knaves 

made prey 
Of him and of the entrusted Commonweal; 
So Truth insists and will not be denied. 
We turn our eyes away, and so will Fame, 
As if in his last battle he had died 
Victor for us and spotless of all blame, 
Doer of hopeless tasks which praters shirk, 
One of those still plain men that do the 

world's rough work. 



APPENDIX 



I. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND 
SERIES OF BIGLOW PAPERS 

[Lowell took occasion, when collecting in a 
book the several numbers of the second series 
of "Biglow Papers," which had appeared in the 
"Atlantic Monthly," to prefix an essay which not 
only gave a personal narrative of the origin of 
the whole scheme, but particularly dwelt upon 
the use in literature of the homely dialect in 
which the poems were couched. In this Cam- 
bridge Edition it has seemed expedient to print 
the Introduction here rather than in immediate 
connection with the poems themselves.] 

Though prefaces seem of late to have fallen 
under some reproach, they have at least this 
advantage, that they set us again on the feet of 
our personal consciousness and rescue us from 
the gregarious mock-modesty or cowardice of 
that we which shrills feebly throughout modern 
literature like the shrieking of mice in the walls 
of a house that has passed its prime. Having 
a few words to say to the many friends whom 
the " Biglow Papers " have won me, I shall ac- 
cordingly take the freedom of the first person 
singular of the personal pronoun. Let each of 
the good-natured unknown who have cheered 
me by the written communication of their sym- 
pathy look upon this Introduction as a private 
letter to himself. 

When, more than twenty years ago, I wrote 
the first of the series, I had no definite plan and 
no intention of ever writing another. Thinking 
the Mexican war, as I think it still, a national 
crime committed in behoof of Slavery, our com- 
mon sin, and wishing to put the f eeling of those 
who thought as I did in a way that would tell, 
I imagined to myself such an upeountry man 
as I had often seen at antislavery gatherings, 
capable of district-school English, but always 
instinctively falling back < into the natural 
stronghold of his homely dialect when heated 
to the point of self-forgetfulness. When I be- 
gan to carry out my conception and to write 
in my assumed character, I found myself in a 
strait between two perils. On the one hand, I 
was in danger of being carried beyond the limit 
of my own opinions, or at least of that temper 
with which every man should speak his mind 
in print, and on the other I feared the risk of 
seeming to vulgarize a deep and sacred con- 
viction. I needed on occasion to rise above the 
level of mere patois, and for this purpose con- 
ceived the Rev. Mr. Wilbur, who should ex- 
press the more cautious element of the New 
England character and its pedantry, as Mr. 



Biglow should serve for its homely common- 
sense vivified and heated by conscience. The 
parson was to be the complement rather than 
the antithesis of his parishioner, and I felt or 
fancied a certain humorous element in the real 
identity of the two under a seeming incongruity. 
Mr. Wilbur's fondness for scraps of Latin, 
though drawn from the life, I adopted de- 
liberately to heighten the contrast. Finding 
soon after that I needed some one as a mouth- 
piece of the mere drollery, for I conceive that 
true humor is never divorced from moral con- 
viction, I invented Mr. Sawin for the clown of 
my little puppet-show. I meant to embody in 
him that half -conscious immorality which I had 
noticed as the recoil in gross natures from a 
puritanism that still strove to keep in its creed 
the intense savor which had long gone out of its 
faith and life. In the three I thought I should 
find room enough to express, as it was my plan 
to do, the popular feeling and opinion of the 
time. For the names of two of my characters, 
since I have received some remonstrances from 
very worthy persons who happen to bear them, 
I would say that they were purely fortuitous, 
probably mere unconscious memories of sign- 
boards or directories. Mr. Sawin's sprang from 
the accident of a rhyme at the end of his first 
epistle, and I purposely christened him by the 
impossible surname of Birdofredum not more 
to stigmatize him as the incarnation of "Mani- 
fest Destiny," in other words, of national reck- 
lessness as to right and wrong, than to avoid the 
chance of wounding any private sensitiveness. 

The success of my experiment soon began not 
only to astonish me, but to make me feel the 
responsibility of knowing that I held in my 
hand a weapon instead of the mere fencing- 
stick I had supposed. Very far from being a 
popular author under my own name, so far, 
indeed, as to be almost unread, I found the 
verses of my pseudonym copied everywhere ; 
I saw them pinned up in workshops ; I heard 
them quoted and their authorship debated ; I 
once even, when rumor had at length caught 
up my name in one of its eddies, had the satis- 
faction of overhearing it demonstrated, in the 
pauses of a concert, that I was utterly incom- 
petent to have written anything of the kind. 
I had read too much not to know the utter 
worthlessness of contemporary reputation, es- 
pecially as regards satire, but I knew also that 
by giving a certain amount of influence it also 
had its worth, if that influence were used on 
the right side. I had learned, too, that the 
first requisite of good writing is to have an 
earnest and definite purpose, whether assthetie 



442 



APPENDIX 



or moral, and that even good writing, to please 
long, must have more than an average amount 
either of imagination or common-sense. The 
first of these falls to the lot of scarcely one in 
several generations ; the last is within the reach 
of many in every one that passes ; and of this 
an author may fairly hope to become in part 
the mouthpiece. If I put on the cap and bells 
and made myself one of the court-fools of King 
Demos, it was less to make his majesty laugh 
than to win a passage to his royal ears for cer- 
tain serious things which I had deeply at heart. 
I say this because there is no imputation that 
could be more galling to any man's self-respect 
than that of being a mere jester. I endeavored, 
by generalizing my satire, to give it what value 
I could beyond the passing moment and the im- 
mediate application. How far I have succeeded 
I cannot tell, but I have had better luck than 
I ever looked for in seeing my verses survive to 
pass beyond their nonage. 

In choosing the Yankee dialect, I did not act 
without forethought. It had long seemed to 
me that the great vice of American writing and 
speaking was a studied want of simplicity, that 
we were in danger of coming to look on our 
mother-tongue as a dead language, to be sought 
in the grammar and dictionary rather than in 
the heart, and that our only chance of escape 
was by seeking it at its living sources among 
those who were, as Scottowe says of Major- 
General Gibbons, " divinely illiterate." Presi- 
dent Lincoln, the only really great public man 
whom these latter days have seen, was great 
also in this, that he was master — witness his 
speech at Gettysburg — of a truly masculine 
English, classic, because it was of no special 
period, and level at once to the highest and 
lowest of his countrymen. I learn from the 
highest authority that his favorite reading was 
in Shakespeare and Milton, to which, of course, 
the Bible should be added. But whoever 
should read the debates in Congress might fancy 
himself present at a meeting of the city council 
of some city of Southern Gaul in the decline of 
the Empire, where barbarians with a Latin 
varnish emulated each other in being more than 
Ciceronian. Whether it be want of culture, for 
the highest outcome of that is simplicity, or for 
whatever reason, it is certain that very few 
American writers or speakers wield their native 
language with the directness, precision, and 
force that are common as the day in the mother 
country. We use it bike Scotsmen, not as if it 
belonged to us, but as if we wished to prove 
that we belonged to it, by showing our inti- 
macy with its written rather than with its 
spoken dialect. And yet all the while our 
popular^ idiom is racy with life and vigor and 
originality, bucksome (as Milton used the word) 
to our new occasions, and proves itself no mere 
graft by sending up new suckers from the old 
root in spite of us. It is only from its roots in 
the living generations of men that a language 
can be reinforced with fresh vigor for its needs ; 
what may be called a literate dialect grows ever 
more and more pedantic and foreign, till it be- 



comes at last as unfitting a vehicle for living 
thought as monkish Latin. That we should all 
be made to talk like books is the danger with 
which we are threatened by the Universal 
Schoolmaster, who does his best to enslave the 
minds and memories of his victims to what he 
esteems the best models of English composi- 
tion, that is to say, to the writers whose style 
is faultily correct and has no blood-warmth in 
it. No language after it has faded into diction, 
none that cannot suck up the feeding juices 
secreted for it in the rich mother-earth of com- 
mon folk, can bring forth a sound and lusty 
book. True vigor and heartiness of phrase do 
not pass from page to page, but from man to 
man, where the brain is kindled and the lips 
suppled by downright hiving interests and by 
passion in its very throe. Language is the soil 
of thought, and our own especially is a rich 
leaf -mould, the slow deposit of ages, the shed 
foliage of feeling, fancy, and imagination, which 
has suffered an earth-change, that the vocal for- 
est, as Howell called it, may clothe itself anew 
with living green. There is death in the diction- 
ary ; and, where language is too strictly limited 
by convention, the ground for expression to grow 
in is limited also ; and we get a potted literature, 
Chinese dwarfs instead of healthy trees. 

But while the schoolmaster has been busy 
starching our language and smoothing it flat 
with the mangle of a supposed classical author- 
ity, the newspaper reporter has been doing even 
more harm by stretching and swelling it to suit 
his occasions. A dozen years ago I began a list, 
which I have added to from time to time, of 
some of the changes which may be fairly laid 
at his door. I give a few of them as showing 
their tendency, all the more dangerous that 
their effect, like that of some poisons, is insen- 
sibly cumulative, and that they are sure at last 
of effect among a people whose chief reading is 
the daily paper. I give in two columns the old 
style and its modern equivalent. 



Old Style. 
Was hanged. 

When the halter was put 
round his neck. 



A great crowd came to see. 

Great fire. 
The fire spread. 

House burned. 

The fire was got under. 

Man fell. 

A horse and wagon ran 
against. 



The frightened horse. 
Sent for the doctor. 



The mayor of the city in a 
short speech welcomed. 



Neio Style. 

Was launched into eternity. 

When the fatal noose was 
adjusted about the neck 
of the unfortunate victim 
of his own unbridled pas- 
sions. 

A vast concourse was assem- 
bled to witness. 

Disastrous conflagration. 

The conflagration extended 
its devastating career. 

Edifice consumed. 

The progress of the devour- 
ing element was arrested. 

Individual was precipitated. 

A valuable horse attached 
to a vehicle driven by J. 
S., in the employment of 
J. B., collided with. 

The infuriated animal. 

Called into requisition the 
services of the family 
physician. 

The chief magistrate of the 
metropolis, in well-chosen 



INTRODUCTION TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



443 



I shall say a few words. 



Began his answer. 
Asked him to dine. 
A bystander advised. 



and eloquent language, 
frequently interrupted by 
the plaudits of the surg- 
ing multitude, officially 
tendered the hospitalities. 

I shall, with your permis- 
sion, beg leave to offer 
some brief observations. 

Commenced his rejoinder. 

Tendered him a banquet. 

One of those omnipresent 
characters who, as if in 
pursuance of some pre- 
vious arrangement, are 
certain to be encountered 
in the vicinity when an 
accident occurs, ventured 
the suggestion. 

He deceased, he passed out 
of existence, his spirit 
quitted its earthly habita- 
tion, winged its way to 
eternity, shook off its 
burden, etc. 



In one sense this is nothing new. The school 
of Pope in verse ended by wire-drawing its 
phrase to such thinness that it could bear no 
weight of meaning whatever. Nor is fine writ- 
ing by any means confined to America. All 
writers without imagination fall into it of ne- 
cessity whenever they attempt the figurative. 
I take two examples from Mr. Merivale's 
"History of the Romans under the Empire," 
which, indeed, is full of such. " The last years 
of the age familiarly styled the Augustan were 
singularly barren of the literary glories from 
which its celebrity was chiefly derived. One 
by one the stars in its firmament had been lost 
to the world ; Virgil and Horace, etc., had long 
since died ; the charm which the imagination 
of Livy had thrown over the earlier annals of 
Rome had ceased to shine on the details of al- 
most contemporary history ; and if the flood of 
his eloquence still continued flowing, we can 
hardly suppose that the stream was as rapid, as 
fresh, and as clear as ever." I will not waste 
time in criticising the bad English or the mix- 
ture of metaphor in these sentences, but will 
simply cite another from the same author which 
is even worse. " The shadowy phantom of the 
Republic continued to flit before the eyes of 
the Csesar. There was still, he apprehended, a 
germ of sentiment existing, on which a scion of 
his own house, or even a stranger, might boldly 
throw himself and raise the standard of patri- 
cian independence." Now a ghost may haunt 
a murderer, but hardly, I should think, to scare 
him with the threat of taking a new lease of its 
old tenement. And fancy the scion of a house 
in the act of throwing itself upon a germ, of senti- 
ment to raise a standard I I am glad, since we 
have so much in the same kind to answer for, 
that this bit of horticultural rhetoric is from 
beyond sea. I would not be supposed to con- 
demn truly imaginative prose. There is a 
simplicity of splendor, no less than of plain- 
ness, and prose would be poor indeed if it could 
not find a tongue for that meaning of the mind 
which is behind the meaning of the words. It 



has sometimes seemed to me that in England 
there was a growing tendency to curtail lan- 
guage into a mere convenience, and to defecate 
it of all emotion as thoroughly as algebraic 
signs. This has arisen, no doubt, in part from 
that healthy national contempt of humbug 
which is characteristic of Englishmen, in part 
from that sensitiveness to the ludicrous which 
makes them so shy of expressing feeling, but in 
part also, it is to be feared, from a growing 
distrust, one might almost say hatred, of what- 
ever is super-material. There is something sad 
in the scorn with which their journalists treat 
the notion of there being such a thing as a 
national ideal, seeming utterly to have forgot- 
ten that even in the affairs of this world the 
imagination is as much matter-of-fact as the un- 
derstanding. If we were to trust the impres- 
sion made on us by some of the cleverest and 
most characteristic of their periodical literature, 
we should think England hopelessly stranded on 
the good-humored cynicism of well-to-do middle- 
age, and should fancy it an enchanted nation, 
doomed to sit forever with its feet under the 
mahogany in that after-dinner mood which fol- 
lows conscientious repletion, and which it is 
ill-manners to disturb with any topics more 
exciting than the quality of the wines. But 
there are already symptoms that a large class 
of Englishmen are getting weary of the domin- 
ion of consols and divine common-sense, and to 
believe that eternal three per cent is not the 
chief end of man, nor the highest and only 
kind of interest to which the powers and oppor- 
tunities of England are entitled. 

The quality of exaggeration has often been 
remarked on as typical of American charac- 
ter, and especially of American humor. In 
Dr. Petri's Gedrdngtes Handbuch der Fremd- 
worter, we are told that the word humbug is 
commonly used for the exaggerations of the 
North- Americans. To be sure, one would be 
tempted to think the dream of Columbus half 
fulfilled, and that Europe had found in the 
West a nearer way to Orientalism, at least in 
diction. But it seems to me that a great deal 
of what is set down as mere extravagance is 
more fitly to be called intensity and pictur- 
esqueness, symptoms of the imaginative faculty 
in full health and strength, though producing, 
as yet, only the raw and formless material in 
which poetry is to work. By and by, perhaps, 
the world will see it fashioned into poem and 
picture, and Europe, which will be hard pushed 
for originality erelong, may have to thank us 
for a new sensation. The French continue 
to find Shakespeare exaggerated because he 
treated English just as our country-folk do 
when they speak of a "steep price," or say 
that they "freeze to" a thing. The first 
postulate of an original literature is that a 
people should use their language instinctively 
and unconsciously, as if it were a lively part of 
their growth and personality, not as the mere 
torpid boon of education or inheritance. Even 
Burns contrived to write very poor verse and 
prose in English. Vulgarisms are often only 



444 



APPENDIX 



poetry in the egg. The late Mr. Horace Mann, 
in one of his public addresses, commented at 
some length on the beauty and moral signi- 
ficance of the French phrase s'orienter, and 
called on his young friends to practise upon it 
in life. There was not a Yankee in his audi- 
ence whose problem had not always been to 
find out what was about east, and to shape his 
course accordingly. This charm which a fa- 
miliar expression gains by being commented, as 
it were, and set in a new bight by a foreign 
language, is curious and instructive. I cannot 
help thinking that Mr. Matthew Arnold forgets 
this a little too much sometimes when he writes 
of the beauties of French style. It would 
not be hard to find in the works of French 
Academicians phrases as coarse as those he 
cites from Burke, only they are veiled by the 
unf amiliarity of the language. But, however 
this may be, it is certain that poets and peas- 
ants please us in the same way by translating 
words back again to their primal freshness, 
and infusing them with a delightful strange- 
ness which is anything but alienation. What, 
for example, is Milton's " edge of battle " but 
a doing into English of the Latin acies ? Was 
die Gans gedacht das der Schwan vollbracht, 
what the goose but thought, that the swan full 
brought (or, to de-Saxonize it a little, what the 
goose conceived, that the swan achieved), and 
it may well be that the life, invention, and 
vigor shown by our popular speech, and the 
freedom with which it is shaped, to the instant 
want of those who use it, are of the best omen 
for our having a swan at last. The part I have 
taken on myself is that of the humbler bird. 

But it is affirmed that there is something 
innately vulgar in the Yankee dialect. M. 
Sainte-Beuve says, with his usual neatness : 
" Je definis un patois une ancienne langue qui a 
eu des malheurs, ou encore une langue toute jeune 
et qui n'a pas fait fortune.'''' The first part of 
his definition applies to a dialect like the Pro- 
vencal, the last to the Tuscan before Dante 
had lifted it into a classic, and neither, it seems 
to me, will quite fit a patois, which is not 
properly a dialect, but rather certain archaisms, 
proverbial phrases, and modes of pronuncia- 
tion, which maintain themselves among the 
uneducated side by side with the finished 
and universally accepted language. Norman 
French, for example, or Scotch down to the 
time of James VI., could hardly be called 
patois, while I should be half inclined to name 
the Yankee a lingo rather than a dialect. It 
has retained a few words now fallen into disuse 
in the mother country, like to tarry, to progress, 
fleshy, fall, and some others ; it has changed 
the meaning of some, as in freshet ; and it has 
clung to what I suspect to have been the broad 
Norman pronunciation of e (which Moliere puts 
into the mouth of his rustics) in such words as 
sarvant, parfect, vartoo, and the like. It main- 
tains something of the French sound of a also 
in words fike chamber, danger (though the lat- 
ter had certainly begun to take its present 
sound so early as 1636, when I find it sometimes 



spelt dainger). But in general it may be said 
that nothing can be found in it which does not 
still survive in some one or other of the English 
provincial dialects. There is, perhaps, a single 
exception in the verb to sleeve. To sleeve silk 
means to divide or ravel out a thread of silk 
with the point of a needle till it becomes floss. 
(A.-S. slefan, to cleave = divide.) This, I think, 
explains the "sleeveless errand" in "Troilus 
and Cressida" so inadequately, sometimes so 
ludicrously darkened by the commentators. Is 
not a "sleeveless errand" one that cannot 
be unravelled, incomprehensible, and therefore 
bootless ? 

I am not speaking now of Americanisms 
properly so called, that is, of words or phrases 
which have grown into use here either through 
necessity, invention, or accident, such as a 
carry, a one-horse affair, a prairie, to vamose. 
Even these are fewer than is sometimes taken 
for granted. But I think some fair defence 
may be made against the charge of vulgarity. 
Properly speaking, vulgarity is in the thought, 
and not in the word or the way of pronouncing 
it. Modern French, the most polite of lan- 
guages, is barbarously vulgar if compared with 
the Latin out of which it has been corrupted, 
or even with Italian. There is a wider gap, 
and one implying greater boorishness, between 
ministerium and metier, or sapiens and sachant, 
than between druv and drove or agin and 
against, which last is plainly an arrant superla- 
tive. Our rustic coverlid is nearer its French 
original than the diminutive covert, into 
which it has been ignorantly corrupted in po- 
liter speech. I obtained from three cultivated 
Englishmen at different times three diverse pro- 
nunciations of a single word, — cowcumber, coo- 
cumber, and cucumber. Of these the first, which 
is Yankee also, comes nearest to the nasality 
of concombre. Lord Ossory assures us that 
Voltaire saw the best society in England, and 
Voltaire tells his countrymen that handkerchief 
was pronounced hankercher. I find it so spelt 
in Hakluyt and elsewhere. This enormity the 
Yankee still persists in, and as there is always 
a reason for such deviations from the sound as 
represented by the spelling, may we not suspect 
two sources of derivation, and find an ancestor 
for kercher in couverture rather than in cou- 
vrechef? And what greater phonetic vagary 
(which Dryden, by the way, called fegary) in 
our lingua rustica than this ker for couvre ? I 
copy from the fly-leaves of my books, where I 
have noted them from time to time, a few ex- 
amples of pronunciation and phrase which will 
show that the Yankee often has antiquity and 
very respectable literary authority on his side. 
My list might be largely increased by referring 
to glossaries, but to them every one can go for 
himself, and I have gathered enough for my 
purpose. 

I will take first those cases in which some- 
thing like the French sound has been preserved 
in certain single letters and diphthongs. And 
this opens a curious question as to how long 
this Gallicism maintained itself in England. 



INTRODUCTION TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



445 



Sometimes a divergence in pronunciation has 
given us two words with different meanings, as 
in genteel and jaunty, which I find coming in 
toward the close of the seventeenth century, 
and wavering between genteel and jantee. It is 
usual in America to drop the u in words end- 
ing in our — a very proper change recommended 
by Howell two centuries ago, and carried out 
by him so far as his printers would allow. This 
and the corresponding changes in musique, mu- 
sick, and the like, which he also advocated, 
show that in his time the French accent indi- 
cated by the superfluous letters (for French had 
once nearly as strong an accent as Italian) had 
gone out of use. There is plenty of French 
accent down to the end of Elizabeth's reign. In 
Daniel we have riches' and counsel', in Bishop 
Hall comet', chapelain, in Donne pictures' , vir- 
tue, presence', mortal' , merit' , hainous , giant' , 
with many more, and Marston's satires are full 
of them. The two latter, however, are not to 
be relied on, as they may be suspected of 
Chaucerizing. Herrick writes baptime. The 
tendency to throw the accent backward began 
early. But the incongruities are perplexing, 
and perhaps mark the period of transition. In 
Warner's " Albion's England " we have creator' 
and creature side by side with the modern 
creator and creature. E'nvy and envying occur 
in Campion (1602), and yet envy' survived Mil- 
ton. In some cases we have gone back again 
nearer to the French, as in revenue for revenue. 
I had been so used to hearing imbecile pro- 
nounced with the accent on the first syllable, 
which is in accordance with the general ten- 
dency in such matters, that I was surprised to 
find imbecile in a verse of Wordsworth. The 
dictionaries all give it so. I asked a highly 
cultivated Englishman, and he declared for im- 
beceel'. In general it may be assumed that 
accent will finally settle on the syllable dictated 
by greater ease and therefore quickness of ut- 
terance. Blasphemous, for example, is more 
rapidly pronounced than blasphem ous, to which 
our Yankee clings, following in this the usage 
of many of the older poets. Amer'ican is easier 
than American, and therefore the false quan- 
tity has carried the day, though the true one 
may be found in George Herbert, and even so 
late as Cowley. 

To come back to the matter in hand. Our 
"uplandish man" retains the soft or thin 
sound of the u in some words, such as rule, 
truth (sometimes also pronounced truth, not 
trooth), while he says noo for new, and gives to 
view and few so indescribable a mixture of the 
two sounds with a slight nasal tincture that it 
may be called the Yankee shibboleth. Voltaire 
says that the English pronounce true as if it 
rhymed with view, and this is the sound our 
rustics give to it. Spenser writes deow {dew) 
which can only be pronounced with the Yankee 
nasality. In rule the least sound of a precedes 
the u. I find reule in Pecock's "Repressor." 
He probably pronounced it rayoole, as the old 
French word from which it is derived was very 
likely to be sounded at first, with a reminiscence 



of its original regula. Tindal has rueler, and 
the Coventry Plays have preudent. In the 
kt Parlyament of Byrdes " I find reule. As for 
noo, may it not claim some sanction in its de- 
rivation, whether from nouveau or neuf, the 
ancient sound of which may very well have 
been noof, as nearer novus ? Beef would seem 
more like to have come from buffe than from 
bozuf, unless the two were mere varieties of 
spelling. The Saxon few may have caught 
enough from its French cousin peu to claim the 
benefit of the same doubt as to sound ; and our 
slang phrase a few (as "I licked him a few ") 
may well appeal to un peu for sense and author- 
ity. Nay, might not lick itself turn out to be 
the good old word lam in an English disguise, if 
the latter should claim descent as, perhaps, he 
fairly might, from the Latin lambere ? The 
New England ferce for fierce, and perce for 
pierce (sometimes heard as fairce and pairce), 
are also Norman. For its antiquity I cite the 
rhyme of verse and pierce in Chapman and 
Donne, and in some commendatory verses by a 
Mr. Berkenhead before the poems of Francis 
Beaumont. Our pairlous for perilous is of the 
same kind, and is nearer Shakespeare's parlous 
than the modern pronunciation. One other 
Gallicism survives in our pronunciation. Per- 
haps I should rather call it a semi-Gallicism, 
for it is the result of a futile effort to repro- 
duce a French sound with English lips. Thus 
for joint, employ, royal, we have jynt, emply, 
ryle, the last differing only from rile {roil) in 
a prolongation of the y sound. I find royal 
so pronounced in the " Mirror for Magistrates." 
In Walter de Biblesworth I find solives Eng- 
lished by gistes. This, it is true, may have 
been pronounced jeests, but the pronunciation 
jystes must have preceded the present spelling, 
which was no doubt adopted after the radical 
meaning was forgotten, as analogical with other 
words in oi. In the same way after Norman- 
French influence had softened the I out of 
would (we already find woud for veut in N. F. 
poems), should followed the example, and then 
an I was foisted into could, where it does not 
belong, to satisfy the logic of the eye, which has 
affected the pronunciation and even the spelling 
of English more than is commonly supposed. I 
meet with eyster for oyster as early as the four- 
teenth century. I find viage in Bishop Hall and 
Middleton the dramatist, bile for boil in Donne 
and Chrononhotonthologos, line for loin in 
Hall, ryall and chyse (for choice), dystrye for 
destroy, in the Coventry Plays. In Chapman's 
"All Fools" is the misprint of employ for 
imply, fairly inferring an identity of sound in 
the last syllable. Indeed, this pronunciation 
was habitual till after Pope, and Rogers tells us 
that the elegant Gray said naise for noise just as 
our rustics still do. Our cornish (which I find 
also in Herrick) remembers the French better 
than cornice does. While clinging more closely 
to the Anglo-Saxon in dropping the g from the 
end of the present participle, the Yankee now 
and then pleases himself with an experiment in 
French nasality in words ending in n. It is not, 



446 



APPENDIX 



so far as my experience goes, very common, 
though it may formerly have been more so. 
Capting, for instance, I never heard save in 
jest, the habitual form being kepp'n. But at 
any rate it is no invention of ours. In that de- 
lightful old volume, " Ane Compendious Buke 
of Godly and Spiritual! Songs," in which I 
know not whether the piety itself or the sim- 
plicity of its expression be more charming, I 
find burding, garding, and cousing, and in the 
State Trials uncerting used by a gentleman. I 
confess that I like the n better than the ng. 

Of Yankee preterites I find risse and rize for 
rose in Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton and 
Dryden, dim in Spenser, chees (chose) in Sir 
John Mandevil, give (gave) in the Coventry 
Plays, shet (shut) in Golding's Ovid, het in 
Chapman and inWeever's Epitaphs, thriv and 
smit in Drayton, quit in Ben Jonson and Henry 
More, and pled in the Paston Letters, nay, even 
in the fastidious Landor. Rid for rode was 
anciently common. So likewise was see for 
saw, but I find it in no writer of authority (ex- 
cept Golding), unless Chaucer's seie and Gow- 
er's sigh were, as I am inclined to think, so 
sounded. Shew is used by Hector Boece, Giles 
Fletcher, Drummond of Hawthornden, and in 
the Paston Letters. Similar strong preterites, 
like snew, thew, and even mew, are not with- 
out example. I find sew for sewed in " Piers 
Ploughman." Indeed, the anomalies in English 
preterites are perplexing. We have probably 
transferred./Zew from flow (as the preterite of 
which I have heard it) to fly because we had 
another preterite in fled. Of weak preterites 
the Yankee retains growed, blowed, for which 
he has good authority, and less often knowed. 
His sot is merely a broad sounding of sat, no 
more inelegant than the common got for gat, 
which he further degrades into gut. When he 
says darst, he uses a form as old as Chaucer. 

The Yankee has retained something of the 
long sound of the a in such words as axe, wax, 
pronouncing them exe, wex (shortened from aix, 
waix). He also says hev and hed (have, had) for 
have and had. In most eases he follows an An- 
glo-Saxon usage. In aix for axle he certainly 
does. I find wex and aisches (ashes) in Pecock, 
and exe in the Paston Letters. Golding rhymes 
wax with wexe and spells challenge cheienge. 
Chaucer wrote hendy. Dryden rhymes can 
with men, as Mr. Biglow would. Alexander 
Gill, Milton's teacher, in his " Logonomia " 
cites hez for hath as peculiar to Lincolnshire. 
I find hayth in Collier's " Bibliographical Ac- 
count of Early English Literature " under the 
date 1584, and Lord Cromwell so wrote it. Sir 
Christopher Wren wrote belcony. Our feet is 
only the O. F. faict. Thaim for them was com- 
mon in the sixteenth century. We have an 
example of the same thing in the double form 
of the verb thrash, thresh. While the New- 
Englander cannot be brought to say instead for 
instid (commonly 'stid where not the last word 
in a sentence), he changes the i into e in red for 
rid, tell for till, hender for hinder, rense for 
rinse. I find red in the old interlude of " Ther- 



sytes," tell in a letter of Daborne to Henslowe, 
and also, I shudder to mention it, in a letter of 
the great Duchess of Marlborough, Atossa her- 
self ! It occurs twice in a single verse of the 
Chester Plays, 

" Tell the day of dome, tell the beam.es blow." 

From the word blow (in another sense) is formed 
blowth, which I heard again this summer after 
a long interval. Mr. Wright 1 explains it as 
meaning "a blossom." With us a single blos- 
som is a blow, while blowth means the blossom- 
ing in general. A farmer would say that there 
was a good blowth on his fruit-trees. The 
word retreats farther inland and away from 
the railways, year by year. Wither rhymes 
hinder with slender, and Shakespeare and Love- 
lace have renched for rinsed. In " Gammer 
Gurton " and " Mirror for Magistrates " is 
sence for since ; Marlborough's Duchess so 
writes it, and Donne rhymes since with Amiens 
and patience, Bishop Hall and Otway with 
pretence, Chapman with citizens, Dryden with 
providence. Indeed, why should not sithence 
take that form ? Dryden's wife (an earl's 
daughter) has tell for till, Margaret, mother of 
Henry VII., writes seche for such, and our ef 
finds authority in the old form yeffe. 

E sometimes takes the place of u, as jedge, 
tredge, bresh. I find tredge in the interlude of 
"Jack Jugler," bresh in a citation by Collier 
from "London Cries" of the middle of the 
seventeenth century, and resche for rush (fif- 
teenth century) in the very valuable "Volume 
of Vocabularies " edited by Mr. Wright. Mesce 
is one of the Anglo-Saxon forms of the word in 
Bosworth's A.-S. Dictionary. Golding has shet. 
The Yankee always shortens the u in the ending 
ture, making ventur, natur, pictur, and so on. 
This was common, also, among the educated of 
the last generation. I am inclined to think it 
may have been once universal, and I certainly 
think it more elegant than the vile vencher, 
naycher, pickcher, that have taken its place, 
sounding like the invention of a lexicographer 
to mitigate a sneeze. Nash in his ' Pierce 
Penniless" has ventur, and so spells it, and I 
meet it also in Spenser, Drayton, Ben Jonson, 
Herrick, and Prior. Spenser has torCrest, which 
can be contracted only from tortur and not from 
torcher. Quarles rhymes nature with creator, 
and Dryden with satire, which he doubtless 
pronounced according to its older form of satyr. 
Quarles has also torture and mortar. Mary 
Boleyn writes kreatur. I find pikter in Izaak 
Walton's autograph will. 

I shall now give some examples which cannot 
so easily be ranked under any special head. 
Gill charges the Eastern counties with kiver for 
cover, and ta for to. The Yankee pronounces 
both too and to like ta (like the tou in touch) 
where they are not emphatic. When they are, 
both become tu. In old spelling, to is the com- 
mon (and indeed correct) form of too, which is 
only to with the sense of in addition. I suspect 
that the sound of our too has caught something 

1 Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English. 



INTRODUCTION TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



447 



from the French tout, and it is possible that the 
old too too is not a reduplication, hut a reminis- 
cence of the feminine form of the same word 
(toute) as anciently pronounced, with the e not 
yet silenced. Gill gives a Northern origin to 
geaun for gown and waund for wound (vulnus). 
Lovelace has waund, but there is something too 
dreadful in suspecting Spenser (who borealized 
in his pastorals) of having ever been guilty of 
geaun ! And yet some delicate mouths even 
now are carefid to observe the Hibernicism of 
ge-ard for guard, and qe-url for girl. Sir Philip 
Sidney (credite posten /) wrote furr for far. I 
would hardly have believed it had I not seen 
it in facsimile. As some consolation, I find 
furder in Lord Bacon and Donne, and Wither 
rhymes far with cur. The Yankee, who omits 
the final d in many words, as do the Scotch, 
makes up for it by adding one in geound. The 

Jmrist does not feel the loss of the d sensibly in 
awn and yon, from the former of which it has 
dropped again after a wrongful adoption (re- 
tained in laundry), while it properly belongs to 
the latter. But what shall we make of git, yit, 
and yis ? I find yis and git in Warner's " Albi- 
on's England," yet rhyming with wit, admit, 
and./zi in Donne, with wit in the " Revenger's 
Tragedy," Beaumont, and Suckling, with writ 
in Dryden, and latest of all with wit in Sir 
Hanbury Williams. Prior rhymes .fitting and 
begetting. Worse is to come. Among others, 
Donne rhymes again with sin, and Quarles 
repeatedly with in. Ben for been, of which our 
dear Whittier is so fond, has the authority of 
Sackville, "Gammer Gurton" (the work of a 
bishop), Chapman, Dryden, and many more, 
though bin seems to have been the common 
form. Whittier' s accenting the first syllable of 
rom'ance finds an accomplice in Drayton among 
others, and, though manifestly wrong, is anal- 
ogous with Itom'ans. Of other Yankeeisms, 
whether of form or pronunciation, which I 
have met with I add a few at random. Pecock 
writes sowdiers (sogers, soudoyers), and Chap- 
man and Gill sodder. This absorption of the I 
is common in various dialects, especially in the 
Scottish. Pecock writes also biyende, and the 
authors of " Jack Jugler " and " Gammer Gur- 
ton " yender. The Yankee includes " yon " in 
the same category, and says "hither an' yen," 
for " to and fro." (Cf. German jenseits.) 
Pecock and plenty more have wrastle. Tindal 
has agynste, gretter, shett, ondone, debyte, and 
scace. " Jack Jugler " has scacely (which I 
have often heard, though skurce is the common 
form), and Donne and Dryden make great 
rhyme with set. In the inscription on Caxton's 
tomb I find ynd for end, which the Yankee 
more often makes eend, still using familiarly 
the old phrase "right anend" for "continu- 
ously." His " stret (straight) along" in the 
same sense, which I thought peculiar to him, I 
find in Pecock. Tindal's debyte for deputy is so 
perfectly Yankee that I could almost fancy the 
brave martyr to have been deacon of the First 
Parish at Jaalam Centre. " Jack Jugler " 
further gives us play sent and sartayne. Dry- 



den rhymes certain with parting, and Chapman 
and Ben Jonson use certain', as the Yankee 
always does, for certainly. The "Coventry 
Mysteries " nave occapied, massage, nateralle, 
materal (material), and meracles, — all excellent 
Yankeeisms. In the "Quatre fils, Aymon " 
(1504), 1 is vertus for virtuous. Thomas Fuller 
called volume vollum, I suspect, for he spells it 
volumne. However, per contra, Yankees habit- 
ually say colume for column. Indeed, to prove 
that our ancestors brought their pronunciation 
with them from the Old Country, and have not 
wantonly debased their mother tongue, I need 
only to cite the words scriptur, Israll, athists, 
and cherfulness from Governor Bradford's " His- 
tory." So the good man wrote them, and so 
the good descendants of his fellow-exiles still 
pronounce them. Brampton Gurdon writes shet 
in a letter to Winthrop. Purtend (pretend) has 
crept like a serpent into the " Paradise of 
Dainty Devices ; " purvide, which is not so bad, 
is in Chaucer. These, of course, are universal 
vulgarisms, and not peculiar to the Yankee. 
Butler has a Yankee phrase, and pronunciation 
too, in " To which these carrHngs-on did tend." 
Langham or Laneham, who wrote an account 
of the festivities at Kenilworth in honor of 
Queen Bess, and who evidently tried to spell 
phonetically, makes sorrows into sororz. Her- 
rick writes hollow for halloo, and perhaps pro- 
nounced it (horresco suggerens !) holld, as Yankees 
do. Why not, when it comes from hola ? I 
find ffelaschyppe (fellowship) in the Coventry 
Plays. Spenser and his queen neither of them 
scrupled to write afore, and the former feels 
no inelegance even in chaw and idee. ''Fore 
was common till after Herrick. Dryden has 
do's for does, and his wife spells worse wosce. 
Afeared was once universal. Warner has ery 
for ever a ; nay, he also has illy, with which 
we were once ignorantly reproached by persons 
more familiar with Murray's Grammar than 
with English literature. And why not illy ? 
Mr. Bartlett says it is "a word used by writ- 
ers of an inferior class, who do not seem to 
perceive that ill is itself an adverb, without 
the termination /?/," and quotes Dr. Messer, 
President of Brown University, as asking tri- 
umphantly, " Why don't you say welly ?" I 
should like to have had Dr. Messer answer his 
own question. It would be truer to say that it 
was used by people who still remembered that 
ill was an adjective, the shortened form of evil, 
out of which Shakespeare and the translators 
of the Bible ventured to make evilly. This- 
slurred evil is "the dram of eale " in "Ham- 
let." I find illy in Warner. The objection to 
illy is not an etymological one, but simply that 
it is contrary to good usage, — a very sufficient 
reason. Ill as an adverb was at first a vulgar- 
ism, precisely like the rustic's when he says, 
"I was treated bad.''' May not the reason of 
this exceptional form be looked for in that 
tendency to dodge what is hard to pronounce, 
to which I have already alluded ? If the 
1 Cited in Collier. (I give my authority where I do 
not quote from the original book.) 



448 



APPENDIX 



letters were distinctly uttered, as they should 
be, it would take' too much time to say ill-ly, 
well-ly, and it is to be observed that we have 
avoided smally 1 ^ and tally in the same way, 
though we add ish to them without hesitation 
in smallish and tallish. We have, to be sure, 
dully and fully, but for the one we prefer stu- 
pidly, and the other (though this may have 
come from eliding the y before as) is giving 
way to full. The uneducated, whose utterance 
is slower, still make adverbs when they will by 
adding like to all manner of adjectives. We 
have had big charged upon us, because we use 
it where an Englishman would now use great. 
I fully admit that it were better to distinguish 
between them, allowing to big a certain con- 
temptuous quality ; but as for authority, I 
want none better than that of Jeremy Taylor, 
who, in his noble sermon "On the Return of 
Prayer," speaks of "Jesus, whose spirit was 
meek and gentle up to the greatness of the 
biggest example." As for our double negative, 
I shall waste no time in quoting instances of it, 
because it was once as universal in English as 
it still is in the neo-Latin languages, where it 
does not strike us as vulgar. I am not sure 
that the loss of it is not to be regretted. But 
surely I shall admit the vulgarity of slurring or 
altogether eliding certain terminal consonants ? 
I admit that a clear and sharp-cut enunciation 
is one of the crowning charms and elegancies of 
speech. Words so uttered are like coins fresh 
from the mint, compared with the worn and 
dingy drudges of long service, — I do not mean 
American coins, for those look less badly the 
more they lose of their original ugliness. No 
one is more painfully conscious than I of the 
contrast between the rifle-crack of an English- 
man's yes and no, and the wet-fuse drawl of 
the same monosyllables in the mouths of my 
countrymen. But I do not find the dropping 
of final consonants disagreeable in Allan Ram- 
say or Burns, nor do I believe that our literary 
ancestors were sensible of that inelegance in 
the fusing them together of which we are con- 
scious. How many educated men pronounce 
the t in chestnut? how many say penlise for 
penthouse, as they should. When a Yankee 
skipper says that he is " boun' for Gloster" 
(not Gloucester, with the leave of the Universal 
Schoolmaster), 2 he but speaks like Chaucer or 
an old ballad-singer, though they would have 
pronounced it boon. This is one of the cases 
where the d is surreptitious, and has been 
added in compliment to the verb bind, with 
which it has nothing to do. If we consider the 
root of the word (though of course I grant that 
every race has a right to do what it will with 
what is so peculiarly its own as its speech), the 
d has no more right there than at the end of 
gone, where it is often put by children, who are 
our best guides to the sources of linguistic cor- 
ruption, and the best teachers of its processes. 
Cromwell, minister of Henry VIII., writes worle 
1 The word occurs in a letter of Mary Boleyn, in 
Golding, and Warner. Milton also was fond of the 
word. 



for world. Chapman has wan for wand, and 
lawn has rightfully displaced laund, though 
with no thought, I suspect, of etymology. 
Rogers tells us that Lady Bathurst sent him 
some letters written to William III. by Queen 
Mary, in which she addresses him as '"''Dear 
Husban." The old form expoun 1 , which our 
farmers use, is more correct than the form with 
a barbarous d tacked on which has taken its 
place. Of the kind opposite to this, like our 
gownd for gown, and the London cockney's 
wind for wine, I find drownd for drown in the 
"Misfortunes of Arthur" (1584), and in Swift. 
And, by the way, whence came the long sound 
of wind which our poets still retain, and which 
survives in " winding " a horn, a totally differ- 
ent word from " winding " a kite-string ? We 
say behind and hinder (comparative) and yet to 
hinder. Shakespeare pronounced kind kind, or 
what becomes of his play on that word and kin 
in " Hamlet " ? Nay, did he not even (shall I 
dare to hint it ?) drop the final d as the Yankee 
still does ? John Lilly plays in the same way 
on kindred and kindness. 

But to come to some other ancient instances. 
Warner rhymes bounds with crowns, grounds 
with towns, text with sex, worst with crust, inter- 
rupts with cups; Drayton, defects with sex; 
Chapman, amends with cleanse ; Webster, de- 
fects with checks ; Ben Jonson, minds with com- 
bines ; Marston, trust and obsequious, clothes and 
shows ; Drydeu gives the same sound to clothes, 
and has also minds with designs. Of course, I 
do not affirm that their ears may not have told 
them that these were imperfect rhymes (though 
I am by no means sure even of that), but they 
surely would never have tolerated any such had 
they suspected the least vulgarity in them. 
Prior has the rhyme first and trust, but puts it 
into the mouth of a landlady. Swift has stunted 
and burnt it, an intentionally imperfect rhyme, 
no doubt, but which I cite as giving precisely 
the Yankee pronunciation of burned. Donne 
couples in unhallowed wedlock after and matter, 
thus seeming to give to both the true Yankee 
sound ; and it is not uncommon to find after and 
daughter. Worse than all, in one of Dodslev's 
Old Plays we have onions rhyming with min- 
ions, — I have tears in my eyes while I record it. 
And yet what is viler than the univeral Misses 
(Mrs.) for Mistress ? This was once a vulgar- 
ism, and in "The Miseries of Inforced Mar- 
riage " the rhyme (printed as prose in Dodsley's 
Old Plays by Collier), 

" To make my young mistress 
Delighting in kisses, 1 " 

is put into the mouth of the clown. Our people 
say Injun for Indian. The tendency to make 
this change where i follows d is common. The 
Italian giorno and French jour from diurnus 
are familiar examples. And yet Injun is one of 
those depravations which the taste challenges 
peremptorily, though it have the authority 

2 Though I find Worcester in the Mirror for Magis- 
trates. 



INTRODUCTION TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



449 



of Charles Cotton — who rhymes "Indies" 
with " cringes " — and four English lexicogra- 
phers, beginning with Dr. Sheridan, bid us say 
invidgeous. Yet after all it is no worse than 
the debasement which all our terminations in 
tion and tience have undergone, which yet we 
hear with resignashun and payshunce, though it 
might have aroused both impat-i-ence and indig- 
na-ti-on in Shakespeare's time. When George 
Herbert tells us that if the sermon be dull, 

" God takes a text and preacheth pati-ence," 
the prolongation of the word seems to convey 
some hint at the longanimity of the virtue. 
Consider what a poor curtal we have made of 
Ocean. There was something of his heave and 
expanse in o-ce-an, and Fletcher knew how to 
use it when he wrote so fine a verse as the sec- 
ond of these, the best deep-sea verse I know, — 

" In desperate storms stem with a little rudder 
The tumbling ruins of the ocean." 

Oceanus was not then wholly shorn of his di- 
vine proportions, and our modern oshun sounds 
like the gush of small -beer in comparison. 
Some other contractions of ours have a vulgar 
air about them. More 'n for more than, as one 
of the worst, may stand for a type of such. 
Yet our old dramatists are full of such obscura- 
tions (elisions they can hardly be called) of the 
th, making whe'r of whether, where of whither, 
here of hither, bro\ of brother, smo'r of smother, 
moW of mother, and so on. And dear Brer Rab- 
bit, can I forget him ? Indeed, it is this that 
explains the word rare (which has Dry den's 
support), and which we say of meat where an 
Englishman would use underdone. I do not 
believe, with the dictionaries, that it had ever 
anything to do with the Icelandic hrar (raw), as it 
plainly has not in rareripe, which means earlier 
ripe, — President Lincoln said of a precocious 
boy that " he was a rareripe." And I do not 
believe it, for this reason, that the earliest 
form of the word with us was, and the common- 
er now in the inland parts still is, so far as I 
can discover, raredone. Goldinghas " egsreere- 
rosted," which, whatever else it mean, cannot 
mean raw-roasted. I find rather as a monosyl- 
lable in Donne, and still better, as giving the 
sound, rhyming with fair in Warner. There is 
an epigram of Sir Thomas Browne in which the 
words rather than make a monosyllable : — 

" "What furie is 't to take Death's part 
And rather than by Nature, die by Art ! " 

The contraction more 'n I find in the old play 
" Fuimus Troes," in a verse where the measure 
is so strongly accented as to leave it beyond 
doubt, — 

" A golden crown whose heirs 
More than half the world subdue." 

It may be, however, that the contraction is in 
" th' orld." It is unmistakable in the " Second 
Maiden's Tragedy : " — 

" It were but folly, 
Dear soul, to boast of more than I can perform." 

Is our gin for given more violent than marH for 



marvel, which was once common, and which I 
find as late as Herrick ? Nay, Herrick has gin 
(spelling it gen), too, as do the Scotch, who 
agree with us likewise in preferring chimly to 
chimney. 

I will now leave pronunciation and turn to 
words or phrases which have been supposed 
peculiar to us, only pausing to pick up a sin- 
gle dropped stitch, in the pronunciation of the 
word supreme, which I had thought native till 
I found it in the well-languaged Daniel. I will 
begin with a word of which I have never met 
with any example in any English writer of au- 
thority. We express the first stage of wither- 
ing in a green plant suddenly cut down by the 
verb to wilt. It is, of course, own cousin of the 
German welken, but I have never come upon it 
in literary use, and my own books of reference 
give me faint help. Graff gives welhen, marces- 
cere, and refers to iveih (weak), and eonjecturally 
to A.-S. hvelan. The A.-S. wealwian (to wither) 
is nearer, but not so near as two words in the 
Icelandic, which perhaps put us on the track of 
its ancestry, — velgi, tepefacere (and velki, with 
the derivative), meaning contaminare. Wilt, at 
any rate, is a good word, filling, as it does, a sen- 
sible gap_ between drooping and withering, and 
the imaginative phrase ' he wilted right down," 
like " he caved right in," is a true American- 
ism. Wilt occurs in English provincial glos- 
saries, but is explained by wither, which with us 
it does not mean. We have a few words such as 
cache, cohog, carry (portage), shoot (chute), timber 
(forest), bushwhack (to pull a boat along by the 
bushes on the edge of a stream), buckeye (a pic- 
turesque word for the horse-chestnut) ; but how 
many can we be said to have fairly brought into 
the language, as Alexander Gill, who first men- 
tions Americanisms, meant it when he said, 
" Sed et ab Americanis nonnulla mutuamur ut 
maiz et canoa " ? Very few, I suspect, and 
those mostly by borrowing from the French, 
German, Spanish, or Indian. 1 "The Dipper" 
for the " Great Bear " strikes me as having a 
native air. Bogus, in the sense of worthless, is 
undoubtedly ours, but is, I more than suspect, 
a corruption of the French bagasse (from low 
Latin bagasea), which travelled up the Missis- 
sippi from New Orleans, where it was used for 
the refuse of the sugar-cane. It is true, we 
have modified the meaning of some words. We 
use freshet in the sense of flood, for which I 
have not chanced upon any authority. Our New 
England cross between Ancient Pistol and Du- 
gald Dalgetty, Captain Underhill, uses the word 
(1638) to mean a current, and I do not recollect 
it elsewhere in that sense. I therefore leave 
it with a ? for future explorers. Crick for 
creek I find in Captain John Smith and in the 
dedication of Fuller's " Holy Warre," and run, 
meaning a small stream, in Waymouth's " Voy- 
age " (1605). Humans for men, which Mr. 
Bartlett includes in his " Dictionary of Ameri- 
canisms," is Chapman's habitual phrase in his 

1 This was written twenty years ago, and now (1890) 
I cannot open an English journal without coming upon 



45° 



APPENDIX 



translation of Homer. I find it also in the old 
play of " The Hog hath lost his Pearl." Dogs 
for andirons is still current in New England, and 
in Walter de Biblesworth I find chiens glossed 
in the margin by andirons. Gunning for shoot" 
ing is in Drayton. We once got credit for the 
poetical word fall for autumn, hut Mr. Bartlett 
and the last edition of Webster's Dictionary re- 
fer us to Dry den. It is even older, for I find it 
in Drayton, and Bishop Hall has autumn fall. 
Middleton plays upon the word : " May'st thou 
have a reasonable good spring, for thou art like 
to have many dangerous foul falls.'''' Daniel 
does the same, and Coleridge uses it as we do. 
Gray uses the archaism picked for peaked, and 
the word smudge (as our backwoodsmen do) 
for a smothered fire. Lord Herbert of Cher- 
bury (more properly perhaps than even Sidney, 
the last preux chevalier) has "the Emperor's 
folks ' ' just as a Yankee would say it. Loan for 
lend, with which we have hitherto been black- 
ened, I must retort upon the mother island, 
for it appears so long ago as in " Albion's 
England." Fleshy, in the sense of stout, may 
claim Ben Jonson's warrant, and I find it also 
so lately as in Francklin's " Lucian." Chore is 
also Jonson's word, and I am inclined to prefer 
it to chare and char, because I think that I see 
a more natural origin for it in the French jour 
— whence it might come to mean a day's work, 
and thence a job — than anywhere else . 1 At onst 
for at once I thought a corruption of our own, 
till I found it in the Chester Plays. I am now 
inclined to suspect it no corruption at all, but 
only an erratic and obsolete superlative at onest. 
To progress' was flung in our teeth till Mr. Pick- 
ering retorted with Shakespeare's " doth pro'- 
gress down thy cheeks." I confess that I was 
never satisfied with this answer, because the 
accent was different, and because the word 
might here be reckoned a substantive quite as 
well as a verb. Mr. Bartlett (in his dictionary 
above cited) adds a surrebutter in a verse from 
Ford's "Broken Heart." Here the word is 
clearly a verb, but with the accent unhappily 
still on the first syllable. Mr. Bartlett says that 
he " cannot say whether the word was used in 
Bacon's time or not." It certainly was, and 
with the accent we give to it. Ben Jonson, in 
the "Alchemist," has this verse, 

"Progress' so from extreme unto extreme," 
and Sir Philip Sidney, 
" Progressing then from fair Turias' golden place." 

Surely we may now sleep in peace, and our 
English cousins will forgive us, since we have 
cleared ourselves from any suspicion of origi- 
nality in the matter! Even after I had con- 
vinced myself that the chances were desperately 
against our having invented any of the Ameri- 
canisms^ with which we are faulted and which 
we are in the habit of voicing, there were one 
or two which had so prevailingly indigenous an 
accent as to stagger me a little. One of these 

1 The Rev. A. L. Mayhew of Wadham College, Ox- 
ford, has convinced me that I was astray in this. 



was "the biggest thing out.'''' Alas, even this 
slender comfort is denied me. Old Gower has 



and 



" So harde an herte was none oute? 
' That such merveile was none oute. 



He also, by the way, says " a sighte of flowres " 
as naturally as our up-country folk would say 
it. Poor for lean, thirds for dower, and dry for 
thirsty I find in Middleton's plays. Dry is also 
in Skelton and in the "World" (1754). In a 
note on Middleton, Mr. Dyce thinks it needful 
to explain the phrase I cant tell (universal in 
America) by the gloss I could not say. Middle- 
ton also uses snecked, which I had believed 
an Americanism till I saw it there. It is, of 
course, only another form of snatch, analogous 
to theek and thatch (cf . the proper names Dek- 
ker and Thacher), break (brack) and breach, 
make (still common with us) and match. 
''Long on for occasioned by (" who is this 'long 
on?") occurs constantly in Gower and like- 
wise in Middleton. ''Cause why is in Chaucer. 
liaising (an English version of the French 
leaven) for yeast is employed by Gayton in his 
" Festivous Notes on Don Quixote." I have 
never seen an instance of our New England 
word emptins in the same sense, nor can I divine 
its original. Gayton has limekill ; also shuts 
for shutters, and the latter is used by Mrs. 
Hutchinson in her "Life of Colonel Hutchin- 
son." Bishop Hall, and Purchas in his "Pil- 
grims," have chist for chest, and it is certainly 
nearer cista, as well as to its form in the Teu- 
tonic languages, whence probably we got it. 
We retain the old sound from cist, but chest 
is as old as Chaucer. Lovelace says wropt for 
wrapt. " Musicianer " I had always associated 
with the militia-musters of my boyhood, and 
too hastily concluded it an abomination of our 
own, but Mr. Wright calls it a Norfolk word, 
and I find it to be as old as 1642 by an extract 
in Collier. " Not worth the time of day," had 
passed with me for native till I saw it in 
Shakespeare's " Pericles." For slick (which is 
only a shorter sound of sleek, like crick and the 
now universal britches for breeches) I will only 
call Chapman and Jonson. " That 's a sure 
card!" and "That's a stinger!" both sound 
like modern slang, but you will find the one in 
the old interlude of " Thersytes " (1537), and 
the other in Middleton. "Right here," a fa- 
vorite phrase with our orators and with a cer- 
tain class of our editors, turns up passim in 
the Chester and Coventry plays. Mr. Dickens 
found something very ludicrous in what he con- 
sidered our neologism right away. But I find 
a phrase very like it, and which I would gladly 
suspect to be a misprint for it, in " Gammer 
Gurton : " — 

" Lyght it and bring it lite away.'''' 

But tite is the true word in this case. After 
all, what is it but another form of straightway ? 
Cussedness, meaning wickedness, malignity, and 
cuss, a sneaking, ill-natured fellow, in such 
phrases as " He done it out o' pure cussedness," 



INTRODUCTION TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



45i 



and "He is a nateral cuss," have been com- 
monly thought Yankeeisms. To vent certain 
contemptuously indignant moods they are ad- 
mirable in their rough-and-ready way. But 
neither is our own. Cursydnesse, in the_ same 
sense of malignant wickedness, occurs in the 
Coventry Plays, and cuss may perhaps claim to 
have come in with the Conqueror. At least 
the term is also French. Saint Simon uses it 
and confesses its usefulness. Speaking of the 
Abbe* Dubois, he says, " Qui e'toit en plein ce 
qu'un mauvais frangois appelle un sacre, mais 
qui ne se peut guere exprimer autrement." 
'"Not worth a cuss," though supported by 
"not worth a damn," may be a mere corrup- 
tion, since "not worth a cress'''' is in " Piers 
Ploughman." "I don't see it," was the pop- 
ular slang a year or two ago, and seemed to 
spring from the soil ; but no, it is in Cibber's 
" Careless Husband." Green sauce for vege- 
tables I meet in Beaumont and Fletcher ,. Gay- 
ton, and elsewhere. Our rustic pronunciation 
sahce (for either the diphthong au was anciently 
pronounced ah, or else we have followed abun- 
dant analogy in changing it to the latter sound, 
as we have in chance, dance, and so many more) 
may be the older one, and at least gives some 
hint at its ancestor salsa. Warn, in the sense 
of notify, is, I believe, now peculiar to us, but 
Pecock so employs it. I find primmer (primer, 
as we pronounce it) in Beaumont and Fletcher, 
and a " square eater " too (compare our " square 
meal "), heft for weight, and " muchness " in the 
"Mirror for Magistrates," bankbill in Swift 
and Fielding, and as for that I might say pas- 
sim. To cotton to is, I rather think, an Ameri- 
canism. The nearest approach to it I have 
found is cotton together, in Congreve's "Love 
for Love." To cotton or cotten, in another 
sense, is old and common. Our word means to 
cling, and its origin, possibly, is to be sought in 
another direction, perhaps in A.-S. cvead, which 
means mud, clay (both proverbially clinging), 
or better yet, in the Icelandic qvoda (otherwise 
kdd), meaning resin and glue, which are Kai-' 
*£oxnv, sticky substances. To spit cotton is, I 
think, American, and also, perhaps, to flax for 
to beat. To the halves still survives among us, 
though apparently obsolete in England. It 
means either to let or to hire a piece of land, 
receiving half the profit in money or in kind 
(partibus locare). I mention it because in a 
note by some English editor, to which I have 
lost my reference, I have seen it wrongly ex- 
plained. The editors of Nares cite Burton. 
To put, in the sense of to go, as Put ! for Be- 
gone 1 would seem our own, and yet it is strictly 
analogous to the French se mettre a la voie, and 
the Italian mettersi in via. Indeed, Dante has 
a verse, 
" Io sarei [for mi sarei] gia messo per lo sentiero,' 1 '' 

which, but for the indignity, might be trans- 
lated, 

"I should, ere this, have put along the way." 

I deprecate in advance any share in General 



Banks's notions of international law, but we 
may all take a just pride in his exuberant 
eloquence as something distinctively American. 
When he spoke a few years ago of " letting the 
Union slide," even those who, for political pur- 
poses, reproached him with the sentiment, ad- 
mired the indigenous virtue of his phrase. Yet 
I find " let the world slide " in Heywood's 
"Edward IV. ; " and in Beaumont and Fletch- 
er's " Wit without Money," Valentine says, 

" Will you go drink, 
And let the world slide ? " 

So also in Sidney's " Arcadia," 

"Let his dominion slide." 

In the one case it is put into the mouth of a 
clown, in the other, of a gentleman, and was 
evidently proverbial. It has even higher sanc- 
tion, for Chaucer writes, 

" "Well nigh all other cures let he sKeZe." 

Mr. Bartlett gives "above one's bend" as an 
Americanism ; but compare Hamlet's " to the 
top of my bent." In his tracks for immediately 
has acquired an American accent, and passes 
where he can for a native, but is an importation 
nevertheless ; for what is he but the Latin e 
vestigio, or at best the Norman French enes- 
lespas, both which have the same meaning ? 
Hotfoot (provincial also in England), I find in 
the old romance of " Tristan," 

" Si s' 'en parti chaut pas." 

Like for as is never used in New England, but 
is universal in the South and West. It has on 
its side the authority of two kings (ego sum 
rex Romanorum et supra grammaticam), Henry 
VIII. and Charles I. This were ample, with- 
out throwing into the scale the scholar and poet 
Daniel. Them was used as a nominative by 
the majesty of Edward VI., by Sir P. Hoby, 
and by Lord Paget (in Froude's "History"). 
I have never seen any passage adduced where 
guess was used as the Yankee uses it. The 
word was f amiliar in the mouths of our ances- 
tors, but with a different shade of meaning 
from that we have given it, which is something 
like rather think, though the Yankee implies 
a confident certainty by it when he says, " I 
guess I du ! " There are two examples in Ot- 
way, one of which (" So in the struggle, I guess 
the note was lost") perhaps might serve our 
purpose, and Coleridge's 

" I guess 't was fearful there to see " 

certainly comes very near. But I have a higher 
authority than either in Selden, who, in one of 
his notes to the " Polyolbion," writes, "The 
first inventor of them (I guess you dislike not 
the addition) was one Berthold Swartz." Here 
he must mean by it, "I take it for granted." 
Robert Greene, in his "Quip for an Upstart 
Courtier," makes Cloth-breeches say, "but I 
gesse your maistership never tried what true 
honor meant." In this case the word seems to 
be used with a meaning precisely like that 



45 2 



APPENDIX 



which we give it. Another peculiarity almost 
as prominent is the beginning sentences, espe- 
cially in answer to questions, with "well." 
Put before such a phrase as ' How d'e do? " 
it is commonly short, and has the sound of wul, 
but in reply it is deliberative, and the various 
shades of meaning which can be conveyed by 
difference of intonation, and by prolonging or 
abbreviating, I should vainly attempt to de- 
scribe. I have heard ooa-ahl, wahl, ahl, wal, 
and something nearly approaching the sound of 
the le in able. Sometimes before " I " it dwin- 
dles to a mere /, as " '1 1 dunno." A friend of 
mine (why should I not please myself, though 
I displease him, by brightening my page with 
the initials of the most exquisite of humor- 
ists, J. H. ?) told me that he once heard five 
"wells," like pioneers, precede the answer to 
an inquiry about the price of land. The first 
was the ordinary wul, in deference to custom ; 
the second, the long, perpending ooahl, with a 
falling inflection of the voice ; the third, the 
same, but with the voice rising, as if in despair 
of a conclusion, into a plaintively nasal whine ; 
the fourth, wulh, ending in the aspirate of a 
sigh ; and then, fifth, came a short, sharp wal, 
showing that a conclusion had been reached. 
I have used this latter form in the " Biglow 
Papers," because, if enough nasality be added, 
it represents most nearly the average sound of 
what I may call the interjection. 

A locution prevails in the Southern and Mid- 
dle States which is so curious that, though 
never heard in New England, I will give a few 
lines to its discussion, the more readily because 
it is extinct elsewhere. I mean the use of allow 
in the sense of affirm, as " I allow that 's a good 
horse." I find the word so used in 1558 by 
Anthony Jenkinson in Hakluyt: " Corne they 
sowe not, neither doe eate any bread, mocking 
the Christians for the same, and disabling our 
strengthe, saying we live by eating the toppe of 
a weede, and drinke a drinke made of the same, 
allowing theyr great devouring of flesh and 
drinking of milke to be the increase of theyr 
strength." That is, they undervalued our 
strength, and affirmed their own to be the re- 
sult of a certain diet. In another passage of 
the same narrative the word has its more com- 
mon meaning of approving or praising : "The 
said king, much allowing this declaration, said." 
Ducange quotes Bracton sub voce Adlocare for 
the meaning "to admit as proved," and the 
transition from this to " affirm " is by no means 
violent. Izaak Walton has "Lebault allows 
waterfrogs to be good meat," and here the 
word is equivalent to affirms. At the same 
time, when we consider some of the meanings 
of allow in old English, and of allouer in old 
French, and also remember that the verbs prize 
and praise are from one root, I think we must 
admit allaudare to a share in the paternity of 
allow. The sentence from Hakluyt would read 
equally well, " contemning our strengthe, . . . 
and praising (or valuing) their great eating of 
flesh as the cause of their increase in strength." 
After all, if we confine ourselves to allocare, it 



may turn out that the word was somewhere 
and somewhen used for to bet, analogously to 
put up, put down, post (cf. Spanish apostar), 
and the like. I hear boys in the street contin- 
ually saying, "I bet that's a good horse," or 
what not, meaning by no means to risk any- 
thing beyond their opinion in the matter. 

The word improve, in the sense of to "oc- 
cupy, make use of, employ," as Dr. Pickering 
defines it, he long ago proved to be no neolo- 
gism. He would have done better, I think, 
had he substituted profit by for employ. He 
cites Dr. Franklin as saying that the word had 
never, so far as he knew, been used in New 
England before he left it in 1723, except in Dr. 
Mather's "Remarkable Providences," which 
he oddly calls a "very old book." Franklin, 
as Dr. Pickering goes on to show, was mis- 
taken. Mr. Bartlett in his "Dictionary" 
merely abridges Pickering. Both of them 
should have confined the application of the 
word to material things, its extension to which 
is all that is peculiar in the supposed Ameri- 
can use of it. For surely " Complete Letter- 
Writers " have been " improving this oppor- 
tunity " time out of mind. I will illustrate 
the word a little further, because Pickering 
cites no English authorities. Skelton has a 
passage in his "Phyllyp Sparowe," which I 
quote the rather as it contains also the word 
allowed, and as it distinguishes improve from 
employ : — 

"His [Chaucer's] Englysh well alowed, 

So as it is emprowed, 

For as it is employd, 

There is no English voyd." 
Here the meaning is to profit by. In Fuller's 
" Holy Warre " (1647), we have " The Egyptians 
standing on the firm ground, were thereby en- 
abled to improve and enforce their darts to the 
utmost." Here the word might certainly mean 
to make, use of. Mrs. Hutchinson (Life of Colo- 
nel H.) uses the word in the same way : " And 
therefore did not emproove his interest to en- 
gage the country in the quarrell." Swift in 
one of his letters says : " There is not an acre 
of land in Ireland turned to half its advantage ; 
yet it is better improved than the people." I 
find it also in "Strength out of Weakness" 
(1652), and Plutarch's "Morals" (1714), but I 
know of only one example of its use in the 
purely American sense, and that is "a very 
good improvement for a mill" in the "State 
Trials " (Speech of the Attorney-General in the 
Lady Ivy's case, 1684). In the sense of employ, 
I could cite a dozen old English authorities. 

In running over the fly-leaves of those de- 
lightful folios for this reference, I find a note 
which reminds me of another word, for our 
abuse of which we have been deservedly ridi- 
culed. I mean lady. It is true I might cite 
the example of the Italian donna 1 (domino), 
which has been treated in the same way by a 
whole nation, and not, as lady among us, by the 
uncultivated only. It perhaps grew into use in 
1 Dame, in English, is a decayed gentlewoman of the 
same family. 



INTRODUCTION TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



453 



the half -democratic republics of Italy in the 
same way and for the same reasons as with us. 
But I admit that our abuse of the word is vil- 
lanous. I know of an orator who once said 
in a public meeting where bonnets preponder- 
ated, that " the ladies were last at the cross and 
first at the tomb " ! But similar sins were 
committed before our day and in the mother 
country. In the "Harleian Miscellany" (vol. 
v. p. 455) I find "this lady is my servant; 
the hedger's daughter loan." In the "State 
Trials" I learn of " a gentlewoman that lives 
cook with " such a one, and I hear the Lord 
High Steward speaking of the wife of a waiter 
at a bagnio as a gentlewoman ! From the same 
authority, by the way, I can state that our vile 
habit of chewing tobacco had the somewhat un- 
savory example of Titus Oates, and I know by 
tradition from an eye-witness that the elegant 
General Burgoyne partook of the same vice. 
Howell, in one of his letters (dated 26 August, 
1623), speaks thus of another " institution " 
which many have thought American : ' ' They 
speak much of that boisterous Bishop of Halver- 
stadt (for so they term him here), that, having 
taken a place wher ther were two Monasteries 
of Nuns and Friers, he caus'd divers feather- 
beds to be rip'd, and all the feathers to be 
thrown in a great Hall, whither the Nuns and 
Friers were thrust naked with their bodies 
oil'd and pitch'd, and to tumble among the 
feathers." Howell speaks as if the thing were 
new to him, and I know not if the "boister- 
ous " Bishop was the inventer of it, but I find 
it practised in England before our Revolution. 
Before leaving the subject, I will add a few 
comments made from time to time on the mar- 
gin of Mr. Bartlett's excellent "Dictionary," 
to which I am glad thus publicly to acknow- 
ledge my many obligations. " Avails " is good 
old English, and the vails of Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds's porter are famous. Averse from, averse 
to, and in connection with them the English 
vulgarism "different &>:" the corrupt use of 
to in these cases, as well as in the Yankee " he 
lives to Salem," "to home," and others, must 
be a very old one, for in the one case it plainly 
arose from confounding the two French prepo- 
sitions a (from Latin ad and ab), and in the 
other from translating the first of them. I 
once thought " different to " a modern vulgar- 
ism, and Mr. Thackeray, on my pointing it out to 
him in " Henry Esmond," confessed it to be an 
anachronism. Mr. Bartlett refers to " the old 
writers quoted in Richardson's Dictionary " for 
"different to," though in my edition of that 
work all the examples are with from. But I 
find to used invariably by Sir R. Hawkins in 
Hakluyt. Banjo is a negro corruption of 0. E. 
bandore. Bind-weed can hardly be modern, 
for wood-bind is old and radically right, inter- 
twining itself through bindan and windan with 
classic stems. Bobolink : is this a contraction 
for Bob o' Lincoln ? I find bobolynes, in one of 
the poems attributed to Skelton, where it may 
be rendered giddy-pate, a term very fit for the 
bird in his ecstasies. Cruel for great is in Hak- 



luyt. Bowling-alley is in Nash's " Pierce Pen- 
nilesse." Curious, meaning nice, occurs con- 
tinually in old writers, and is as old as Peeock's 
" Repressor." Droger is 0. E. drugger. Edu- 
cational is in Burke. Feeze is only a form of 
fizz. To fix, in the American sense, I find 
used by the Commissioners of the United Colo- 
nies so early as 1675, " their arms well fixed 
and fit for service." To take the foot in the hand 
is German ; so is to go under. Gundalow is old ; 
I find gundelo in Hakluyt, and gundello in 
Booth's reprint of the folio Shakespeare of 
1623. Gonoff is 0. E. gnoffe. Heap is in 
"Piers Ploughman" ("and other names an 
heep"), and in Hakluyt ("seeing such a heap 
of their enemies ready to devour them "). To 
liquor is in the "Puritan" ("call 'em in, and 
liquor 'em a little "). To loaf: this, I think, 
is unquestionably German. Laufen is pro- 
nounced lofen in some parts of Germany, and I 
once heard one German student say to another, 
Ich lauf (lofe) hier bis du wiederkehrest, and he 
began accordingly to saunter up and down, in 
short, to loaf. To mull, Mr. Bartlett says, 
means " to soften, to dispirit," and quotes from 
"Margaret," — " There has been a pretty con- 
siderable mullin going on among the doctors," 
— where it surely cannot mean what he says it 
does. We have always heard mulling used for 
stirring, bustling, sometimes in an underhand 
way. It is a metaphor derived probably from 
mulling wine, and the word itself must be a cor- 
ruption of mell, from 0. F. mesler. Pair of 
stairs is in Hakluyt. To pull up stakes is in 
Curwen's Journal, and therefore pre-Revolu- 
tionary. I think I have met with it earlier. 
Raise: under this word Mr. Bartlett omits " to 
raise a house," that is, the frame of a wooden 
one, and also the substantive formed from it, a 
raisin\ Retire for go to bed is in Fielding's 
"Amelia." Setting-poles cannot be new, fori 
find" some set [the boats] with long poles" in 
Hakluyt. Shoulder-hitters : I find that shoulder- 
striker is old, though I have lost the reference 
to my authority. Snag is no new word, though 
perhaps the Western application of it is so ; but 
I find in Gill the proverb, " A bird in the bag 
is worth two on the snag." Dryden has swop 
and to rights. Trail: Hakluyt has "many 
waves traled by the wilde beastes." 

I subjoin a few phrases not in Mr. Bartlett's 
book which I have heard. Bald-headed: "to 
go it bald-headed ; " in great haste, as where 
one rushes out without his hat. Bogue: "I 
don't git much done 'thout I bogue right in 
along 'th my men." Carry: a portage. Cat- 
nap: a short doze. Cat-stick: a small stick. 
Chowder-head : a muddle-brain. Cling-john : a 
soft cake of rye. Cocoa-nut: the head. Cohees : 
applied to the people of certain settlements 
in Western Pennsylvania, from their use of 
the archaic form Qmo' he. Dunnow'z I know : 
the nearest your true Yankee ever comes to 
acknowledging ignorance. Essence-pedler : a 
skunk. First-rate and a half. Fish-flakes, for 
drying fish: 0. E. fleck (cratis). Gander-party: 
a social gathering of men only. Gawnicus : a 



454 



APPENDIX 



dolt. Hawkins's whetstone : rum ; in derision 
of one Hawkins, a well-known temperance-lec- 
turer. Hyper : to bustle : " I mus' hyper about 
an' git tea." Keeler-tub : one in which dishes 
are washed. (" And Greasy Joan doth keel the 
pot. ' ') Lap-tea : where the guests are too many 
to sit at table. Last of pea-time : to be hard-up. 
Lose-laid (loose-laid) : a weaver's term, and 
probably English ; weak-willed. Malahack : to 
cut up hastily or awkwardly. Moonglade : a 
beautiful word : for the track of moonlight on 
the water. Off -ox : an unmanageable, cross- 
grained fellow. Old Driver, Old Splitfoot : the 
Devil. Onhitch : to pull trigger (cf . Spanish 
disparar). Popular: conceited. Rote: sound 
of surf before a storm. Rot-gut : cheap whis- 
key ; the word occurs in Hey wood's " English 
Traveller " and Addison's " Drummer," for a 
poor kind of drink. Seem : it is habitual with 
the New-Englander to put this verb to strange 
uses, as "I can't seem to be suited," "I 
couldn't seem to know him." Sidehill, for 
hillside. State-house : this seems an American- 
ism, whether invented or derived from the 
Dutch Stadhuys, I know not. Strike and string : 
from the game of ninepins ; to make a strike is 
to knock down all the pins with one ball, hence 
it has come to mean fortunate, successful. 
Swampers : men who break out roads for lum- 
berers. Tormented: euphemism for damned, 
as, "not a tormented cent." Virginia fence, to 
make a : to walk like a drunken man. 

It is always worth while to note down the 
erratic words or phrases which one meets with 
in any dialect. They may throw light on the 
meaning of other words, on the relationship of 
languages, or even on history itself. In so 
composite a language as ours they often supply 
a different form to express a different shade of 
meaning, as in viol and. fiddle, thrid and thread, 
smother and smoulder, where the I has crept in 
by a false analogy with would. We have given 
back to England the excellent adjective lengthy, 
formed honestly like earthy, drouthy, and others, 
thus enabling their journalists to characterize 
our President's messages by a word civilly 
compromising between long and tedious, so as 
not to endanger the peace of the two countries 
by wounding our national sensitiveness to Brit- 
ish criticism. Let me give two curious ex- 
amples of the antiseptic property of dialects 
at which I have already glanced. Dante has 
dindi as a childish or low word for danari 
(money), and in Shropshire small Roman coins 
are still dug up which the peasants call dinders. 
This can hardly be a chance coincidence, but 
seems rather to carry the word back to the 
Roman soldiery. So our farmers say chuk, 
chuk, to their pigs, and ciacco is one of the 
Italian words for hog. When a countryman 
tells us that he "fell all of a heap,' 1 ' 1 I cannot 
help thinking that he unconsciously points to 
an affinity between our word tumble, and the 
Latin tumulus, that is older than most others. 

1 Which, whether in that form, or under its aliases 
wiich-grasH and coocA-grass, points us back to its origi- 
nal Saxon quick. 



I believe that words, or even the mere into- 
nation of them, have an astonishing vitality 
and power of propagation by the root, like the 
gardener's pest, quitch-grass, 1 while the appli- 
cation or combination of them may be new. It 
is in these last that my countrymen seem to me 
full of humor, invention, quickness of wit, and 
that sense of subtle analogy which needs only 
refining to become fancy and imagination. 
Prosaic as American life seems in many of its 
aspects to a European, bleak and bare as it is 
on the side of tradition, and utterly orphaned 
of the solemn inspiration of antiquity, I cannot 
help thinking that the ordinary talk of unlet- 
tered men among us is fuller of metaphor and 
of phrases that suggest lively images than that 
of any other people I have seen. Very many 
such will be found in Mr. Bartlett's book, 
though his short list of proverbs at the end 
seem to me, with one or two exceptions, as un- 
American as possible. Most of them have no 
character at all but coarseness, and are quite 
too long-skirted for working proverbs, in which 
language always " takes off its coat to it," as 
a Yankee would say. There are plenty that 
have a more native and puckery flavor, seed- 
lings from the old stock often, and yet new 
varieties. One hears such not seldom among 
us Easterners, and the West would yield many 
more. "Mean enough to steal acorns from a 
blind hog;" "Cold as the north side of a 
Jenooary gravestone by starlight ; " "Hungry 
as a graven image ; " " Pop'lar as a hen with 
one chicken;" "A hen's time ain't much;" 
" Quicker 'n greased lightnin' ; " " Ther 's 
sech a thing ez bein' tu " (our Yankee 
paraphrase of /u.ijSev ayov) ; hence the phrase 
tooin* round, meaning a supererogatory ac- 
tivity like that of flies; "Stingy enough to 
skim his milk at both eends" ; "Hot as the 
Devil's kitchen ; " " Handy as a pocket in a 
shirt ; " " He 's a whole team and the dog un- 
der the wagon ; " " All deacons are good, but 
there 's odds in deacons " (to deacon berries is 
to put the largest atop); "So thievish they 
hev to take in their stone walls nights ; " 2 may 
serve as specimens. " I take my tea barfoot," 
said a backwoodsman when asked if he would 
have cream and sugar. (I find barfoot, by the 
way, in the Coventry Plays.) A man speak- 
ing to me once of a very rocky clearing said, 
" Stone 's got a pretty heavy mortgage on that 
land," and I overheard a guide in the woods 
say to his companions who were urging him to 
sing, " Wal, I did sing once, but toons gut 
invented, an' thet spilt my trade." Whoever 
has driven over a stream by a bridge made of 
slabs will feel the picturesque force of the epi- 
thet slab-bridged applied to a fellow of shaky 
character. Almost every county has some good 
die-sinker in phrase, whose mintage passes into 
the currency of the whole neighborhood. Such 
a one described the county jail (the one stone 
building where all the dwellings are of wood) 
2 And, by the way, the Yankee never says " o' 
nights," but uses the older adverbial form, analogous 
to the German nachts. 



INTRODUCTION TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



455 



as " the house whose underpinnin' come up to 
the eaves," and called hell "the place where 
they did n't rake up their fires nights." I once 
asked a stage-driver if the other side of a hill 
were as steep as the one we were climbing : 
" Steep ? chain lightnin' could n' go down it 
'thout puttin' the shoe on ! " And this brings 
me back to the exaggeration of which I spoke 
before. To me there is something very taking 
in the negro '* so black that charcoal made a 
chalk-mark on him," and the wooden shingle 
"painted so like marble that it sank in wa- 
ter," as if its very consciousness or its vanity 
had been overpersuaded by the cunning of the 
painter. I heard a man, in order to give a 
notion of some very cold weather, say to an- 
other that a certain Joe, who had been taking 
mercury, found a lump of quicksilver in each 
boot, when he went home to dinner. This 
power of rapidly dramatizing a dry fact into 
flesh and blood and the vivid conception of Joe 
as a human thermometer strike me as showing 
a poetic sense that may be refined into fac- 
ulty. At any rate there is humor here, and not 
mere quickness of wit, — the deeper and not 
the shallower quality. The tendency of humor 
is always towards overplus of expression, while 
the very essence of wit is its logical precision. 
Captain Basil Hall denied that our people had 
any humor, deceived, perhaps, by their gravity 
of manner. But this very seriousness is often 
the outward sign of that humorous quality of 
the mind which delights in finding an element 
of identity in things seemingly the most incon- 
gruous, and then again in forcing an incongruity 
upon things identical. Perhaps Captain Hall 
had no humor himself, and if so he would 
never find it. Did he always feel the point 
of what was said to himself ? I doubt it, be- 
cause I happen to know a chance he once had 
given him in vain. The Captain was walking up 
and down the veranda of a country tavern in 
Massachusetts while the coach changed horses. 
A thunder-storm was going on, and, with that 
pleasant European air of indirect self-compli- 
ment in condescending to be surprised by 
American merit, which we find so conciliating, 
he said to a countryman lounging against the 
door, " Pretty heavy thunder you have here." 
The other, who had divined at a glance his 
feeling of generous concession to a new country, 
drawled gravely, " Waal, we c?w, considerin' 
the number of inhabitants." This, the more I 
analyze it, the more humorous does it seem. 
The same man was capable of wit also, when 
he would. He was a cabinet-maker, and was 
once employed to make some commandment- 
tables for the parish meeting-house. The par- 
son, a very old man, annoyed him by looking 
into his workshop every morning, and caution- 
ing him to be very sure to pick out " clear 
mahogany without any knots in it." At last, 
wearied out, he retorted one day: " Wal, Dr. 
B., I guess ef I was to leave the nots out o' 
some o' the e'man'ments, 't 'ould soot you full 
ez wal ! " 

If I had taken the pains to write down the 



proverbial or pithy phrases I have heard, or if 
I had sooner thought of noting the Yankeeisms 
I met with in my reading, I might have been 
able to do more justice to my theme. But I 
have done all I wished in respect to pronuncia- 
tion, if I have proved that where we are vulgar, 
we have the countenance of very good company. 
For, as to the jus et norma loquendi, I agree 
with Horace and those who have paraphrased 
or commented him, from Boileau to Gray. I 
think that a good rule for style is Galiani's defi- 
nition of sublime oratory, — " Part de tout dire 
sans e*tre mis a la Bastille dans un pays ou il 
est d^fendu de rien dire." I profess myself a 
fanatical purist, but with a hearty contempt 
for the speech-gilders who affect purism with- 
out any thorough, or even pedagogic, know- 
ledge of the engendure, growth, and affinities 
of the noble language about whose mesalliances 
they profess (like Dean Alf ord) to be so solici- 
tous. If they had their way — ! " Doeh es sey, ' ' 
says Lessing, " dass jene gothische Hoflichkeit 
eine unentbehrliche Tugend des heutigen Um- 
ganges ist. Soil sie darum unsere Schriften 
eben so schaal und falsch machen als unsern 
Umgang ? " And Drayton was not far wrong 
in affirming that 

" 'T is possible to climb, 
To kindle, or to slake, 

Although in Skelton's rhyme." 

Cumberland in his Memoirs tells us that 
when, in the midst of Admiral Rodney's great 
sea-fight, Sir Charles Douglas said to him, " Be- 
hold, Sir George, the Greeks and Trojans con- 
tending for the body of Patroclus ! " the Ad- 
miral answered, peevishly, " Damn the Greeks 
and damn the Trojans ! I have other things to 
think of." After the battle was won, Rodney 
thus to Sir Charles, " Now, my dear friend, I 
am at the service of your Greeks and Trojans, 
and the whole of Homer's Iliad, or as much of 
it as you please ! " I had some such feeling 
of the impertinence of our pseudo-classicality 
when I chose our homely dialect to work in. 
Should we be nothing, because somebody had 
contrived to be something (and that perhaps in 
a provincial dialect) ages ago ? and to be no- 
thing by our very attempt to be that something, 
which they had already been, and which there- 
fore nobody could be again without being a 
bore ? Is there no way left, then, I thought, 
of being natural, of being naif, which means 
nothing more than native, of belonging to the 
age and country in which you are born ? The 
Yankee, at least, is a new phenomenon ; let us 
try to be that. It is perhaps a pis aller, but is 
not No Thoroughfare written up everywhere 
else ? In the literary world, things seemed to 
me very much as they were in the latter half 
of the last century. Pope, skimming the cream 
of good sense and expression wherever he could 
find it, had made, not exactly poetry, but an 
honest, salable butter of worldly wisdom which 
pleasantly lubricated some of the drier morsels 
of life's daily bread, and, seeing this, scores of 
harmlessly insane people went on for the next 



456 



APPENDIX 



fifty years coaxing his buttermilk with the reg- 
ular up and down of the pentameter churn. 
And in our day do we not scent everywhere, 
and even carry away in our clothes against our 
will, that faint perfume of musk which Mr. 
Tennyson has left behind him, or worse, of 
Heine's patchouli ? And might it not be pos- 
sible to escape them by turning into one of our 
narrow New England lanes, shut in though it 
were by bleak stone walls on either hand, and 
where no better flowers were to be gathered 
than goldenrod and hardback ? 

Beside the advantage of getting out of the 
beaten track, our dialect offered others hardly 
inferior. As I was about to make an endeavor 
to state them, I remembered something that 
the clear-sighted Goethe had said about Hebel's 
" Allemannische Gedichte," which, making 
proper deduction for special reference to the 
book under review, expresses what I would have 
said far better than I could hope to do : "Allen 
diesen innern guten Eigensehaften kommt die 
behagliehe naive Sprache sehr zu statten. Man 
findet mehrere sinnlich bedeutende und wohl- 
klingende Worte . . . von einem, zwei Buch- 
staben, Abbreviationen, Contractionen, viele 
kurze, leichte Sylben, neue Reime, welches, 
mehr als man glaubt, ein Vortheil fur den 
Dichter ist. Diese Elemente werden durch 
gliickliche Constructionen und lebbafte Formen 
zu einem Styl zusammengedrangt der zu diesem 
Zwecke vor unserer Buehersprache grosse Vor- 
ziige hat." Of course I do not mean to imply 
that I have come near achieving any such suc- 
cess as the great critic here indicates, but I 
think the success is there, and to be plucked by 
some more fortunate hand. 

Nevertheless, I was encouraged by the ap- 
proval of many whose opinions I valued. With 
a feeling too tender and grateful to be mixed 
with any vanity, I mention as one of these the 
late A. H. Clough, who more than any one of 
those I have known (no longer living), except 
Hawthorne, impressed me with the constant 
presence of that indefinable thing we call 
genius. He often suggested that I should try 
my hand at some Yankee Pastorals, which 
would admit of more sentiment and a higher 
tone without foregoing the advantage offered 
by the dialect. I have never completed any- 
thing of the kind, but, in this Second Series, 
both my remembrance of his counsel and the 
deeper feeling called up by the great interests 
at stake, led me to venture some passages 
nearer to what is called poetical than could 
have been admitted without incongruity into 
the former series. The time seemed calling to 
me, with the old poet, — 

" Leave, then, your wonted prattle, 
The oaten reed forbear ; 
For I hear a sound of battle, 
And trumpets rend the air ! " 

The only attempt I had ever made at any- 
thing like a pastoral (if that may be called an 
attempt which was the result almost of pure 
accident) was in "The CourtinV While the 
introduction to the First Series was going 



through the press, I received word from the 
printer that there was a blank page left which 
must be filled. I sat down at once and impro- 
vised another fictitious "notice of the press," 
in which, because verse would fill up space 
more cheaply than prose, I inserted an extract 
from a supposed ballad of Mr. Biglow. I kept 
no copy of it, and the printer, as directed, cut 
it off when the gap was filled. Presently I 
began to receive letters asking for the rest of 
it, sometimes for the balance of it. I had none, 
but to answer such demands, I patched a con- 
clusion upon it in a later edition. Those who 
had only the first continued to importune me. 
Afterward, being asked to write it out as an 
autograph for the Baltimore Sanitary Commis- 
sion Fair, I added other verses, into some of 
which I infused a little more sentiment in a 
homely way, and after a fashion completed it 
by sketching in the characters and making a 
connected story. Most likely I have spoiled 
it, but I shall put it at the end of this Intro- 
duction, to answer once for all those kindly 
importunings. 

As I have seen extracts from what purported 
to be writings of Mr. Biglow, which were not 
genuine, I may properly take this opportunity 
to say, that the two volumes now published 
contain every line I ever printed under that 
pseudonyme, and that I have never, so far as 
I can remember, written an anonymous arti- 
cle (elsewhere than in the " North American 
Review" and the "Atlantic Monthly," dur- 
ing my editorship of it) except a review of 
Mrs. Stowe's "Minister's Wooing," and, some 
twenty years ago, a sketch of the antislavery 
movement in America for an English journal. 

A word more on pronunciation. I have en- 
deavored to express this so far as I could by 
the types, taking such pains as, I fear, may 
sometimes make the reading harder than need, 
be. At the same time, by studying uniform- 
ity I have sometimes been obliged to sacrifice 
minute exactness. The emphasis often modi- 
fies the habitual sound. For example, for is 
commonly fer (a shorter sound than fur f or far), 
but when emphatic it always becomes for, as 
" wut for ! " So too is pronounced like to (as it 
was anciently spelt), and to like ta (the sound 
as in the tou of touch), but too, when emphatic, 
changes into tue, and to, sometimes, in similar 
cases, into toe, as, "I didn' hardly know wut 
toe du ! " Where vowels come together, or one 
precedes another following an aspirate, the two 
melt together, as was common with the older 
poets who formed their versification on French 
or Italian models. Drayton is thoroughly Yan- 
kee when he says "I 'xpect," and Pope when 
he says, ' ' t' inspire. ' ' With becomes sometimes 
Hth, , uth, or Hh, or even disappears wholly 
where it comes before the, as, I went along 
th' Square" (along with the Squire), the are 
sound being an archaism which I have noticed 
also in choir, like the old Scottish quhair. 1 
1 Greene in his Quip for an Upstart Courtier says, 
"to square it up and downe the streetes before his. 
mistresse." 



INTRODUCTION TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



457 



(Herrick has, "Of flowers ne'er sucked by th' 
i;heeving bee.") Without becomes athout and 
■thout. Afterwards always retains its locative s, 
and is pronounced always ahterwurds', with a 
strong accent on the last syllable. This oddity 
has some support in the erratic towards' instead 
of to' wards, which we find in the poets and 
sometimes hear. The sound given to the first 
syllable of to'wards, I may remark, sustains the 
Yankee lengthening of the o in to. At the be- 
ginning of a sentence, ahterwurds has the accent 
on the first syllable ; at the end of one, on the 
last; as, " ahterwurds he tol' me," "he tol' 
me ahterwurds' '." The Yankee never makes a 
mistake in his aspirates. U changes in many 
words to e, always in such, brush, tush, hush, 
rush, blush, seldom in much, oftener in trust and 
crust, never in mush, gust, bust, tumble, or (?) 
flush, in the latter case probably to avoid con- 
fusion with flesh. I have heard flush with the 
e sound, however. For the same reason, I 
suspect, never in gush (at least, I never heard 
it), because we have already one gesh for gash. 
A and i short frequently become e short. U 
always becomes o in the prefix un (except unto), 
and o in return changes to u short in uv for of, 
and in some words beginning^ with om. Tand 
d, b and p, v and w, remain intact. So much 
occurs to me in addition to what I said on this 
head in the preface to the former volume. 

Of course in what I have said I wish to be 
understood as keeping in mind the difference 
between provincialisms properly so called and 
slang. Slang is always vulgar, because it is 
not a natural but an affected way of talking, 
and all mere tricks of speech or writing are 
offensive. I do not think that Mr. Biglow can 
be fairly charged with vulgarity, and I should 
have entirely failed in my design, if I had not 
made it appear that high and even refined 
sentiment may coexist with the shrewder and 
more comic elements of the Yankee character. 
I believe that what is essentially vulgar and 
mean-spirited in politics seldom has its source 
in the body of the people, but much rather 
among those who are made timid by their 
wealth or selfish by their love of power. A 
democracy can afford much better than an 
aristocracy to follow out its convictions, and is 
perhaps better qualified to build those convic- 
tions on plain principles of right and wrong, 
rather than on the shifting sands of expediency. 
T had always thought "Sam Slick" a libel on 
the Yankee character, and a complete falsifica- 
tion of Yankee modes of speech, though, for 
aught I know, it may be true in both respects 
so far as the British provinces are concerned. 
To me the dialect was native, was spoken all 
about me when a boy, at a time when an Irish 
day-laborer was as rare as an American one 
now. Since then I have made a study of it so 
far as opportunity allowed. But when I write 
in it, it is as in a mother tongue, and I am 
carried back far beyond any studies of it to 
long-ago noonings in my father's hay-fields, 
and to the talk of Sam and Job over their jug 
of blackstrap under the shadow of the ash-tree 



which still dapples the grass whence they have 
been gone so long. 

But life is short, and prefaces should be. 
And so, my good friends, to whom this intro- 
ductory epistle is addressed, farewell. Though 
some of you have remonstrated with me, I shall 
never write any more "Biglow Papers," how- 
ever great the temptation, — great especially 
at the present time, — unless it be to complete 
the original plan of this Series by bringing out 
Mr. Sawin as an "original Union man." The 
very favor with which they have been received 
is a hindrance to me, by forcing on me a self- 
consciousness from which I was entirely free 
when I wrote the First Series. Moreover, I am 
no longer the same careless youth, with nothing 
to do but live to myself, my books, and my 
friends, that I was then. I always hated poli- 
ties, in the ordinary sense of the word, and I 
am not likely to grow fonder of them, now that 
I have learned how rare it is to find a man who 
can keep principle clear from party and per- 
sonal prejudice, or can conceive the possibility 
of another's doing so. I feel as if I could in 
some sort claim to be an emeritus, and I am 
sure that political satire will have full justice 
done it by that genuine and delightful humorist, 
the Rev. Petroleum V. Nasby. I regret that 
I killed off Mr. Wilbur so soon, for he would 
have enabled me to bring into this preface a 
number of learned quotations, which must now 
go a-begging, and also enabled me to disperson- 
alize myself into a vicarious egotism. He would 
have helped me likewise in clearing myself 
from a charge which I shall briefly touch on, 
because my friend Mr. Hughes has found it 
needful to defend me in his preface to one of 
the English editions of the " Biglow Papers." 
I thank Mr. Hughes heartily for his friendly 
care of my good name, and were his Preface 
accessible to my readers here (as I am glad it is 
not, for its partiality makes me blush), I should 
leave the matter where he left it. The charge 
is of profanity, brought in by persons who pro- 
claimed African slavery of Divine institution, 
and is based (so far as I have heard) on two 
passages in the First Series — 



and, 



" An' you 've gut to git up airly, 
Ef you want to take in God," 

" God '11 send the bill to you," 



and on some Scriptural illustrations by Mr. 
Sawin. 

Now, in the first place, I was writing under 
an assumed character, and must talk as the 
person would whose mouthpiece I made myself. 
Will any one familiar with the New England 
countryman venture to tell me that he does not 
speak of sacred things familiarly ? that Biblical 
allusions (allusions, that is, to the single book 
with whose language, from his church-going 
habits, he is intimate) are not frequent on his 
lips ? If so, he cannot have pursued his studies 
of the character on so many long-ago muster- 
fields and at so many cattle-shows as I. But I 
scorn any such line of defence, and will confess 



458 



APPENDIX 



at once that one of the things I am proud of in 
my countrymen is (I am not speaking now of 
such persons as I have assumed Mr. Sawin to 
he) that they do not put their Maker away far 
from them, or interpret the fear of God into 
heing afraid of Him. The Talmudists had 
conceived a deep truth when they said, that 
" all things were in the power of God, save the 
fear of God ; " and when people stand in great 
dread of an invisible power, I suspect they 
mistake quite another personage for the Deity. 
I might justify myself for the passages criti- 
cised by many parallel ones from Scripture, 
but I need not. The Reverend Homer Wil- 
bur's note-books supply me with three apposite 
quotations. The first is from a Father of the 
Roman Church, the second from a Father of 
the Anglican, and the third from a Father of 
Modern English poetry. The Puritan divines 
would furnish me with many more such. St. 
Bernard says, Sapiens nummularius est Deus : 
nummum jictum non recipiet ; "A cunning 
money-changer is God : he will take in no base 
coin." Latimer says, " You shall perceive that 
God, by this example, shaketh us by the noses 
and taketh us by the ears." Familiar enough, 
both of them, one would say ! But I should 
think Mr. Biglow had verily stolen the last 
of the two maligned passages from Dryden's 
" Don Sebastian," where I find 

" And beg of Heaven to charge the bill on me ! " 

And there I leave the matter, being willing to 
believe that the Saint, the Martyr, and even 
the Poet, were as careful of God's honor as my 
critics are ever likely to be. 



II. GLOSSARY TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS 

Act'lly, actually. 
Air, are. 
Airth, earth. 
Airy, area. 
Aree, area. 
Arter, after. 
Ax, ask. 



Beller, bellow. 
Bellowses, lungs. 
Ben, been. 
Bile, boil. 
Bimeby, by and by. 
Blurt out, to speak bluntly. 
Bust, burst. 

Buster, a roistering blade ; 
eral superlative. 



used also as a gen- 



Caird, carried. 
Cairn, carrying. 
Caleb, a turncoat. 
Cal'late, calculate. 
Cass, a person with two lives. 
Close, clothes. 
Cockerel, a young cock. 
Cocktail, a kind of drink; 
-peculiar to soldiers. 



also, an ornament 



Convention, a place where people are imposed 
on ; a juggler's show. 

Coons, a cant term for a now defunct party ; de- 
rived, perhaps, from the fact of their being 
commonly up a tree. 

Cornwallis, a sort of muster in masquerade ; 
supposed to have had its origin soon after the 
Revolution, and to commemorate the surren- 
der of Lord Cornwallis. It took the place of 
the old Guy Fawkes procession. 

Crooked stick, a perverse, froward person. 

Cunnle, a colonel. 

Cus, a curse; also, a pitiful fellow. 

Darsn't, used indiscriminately, either in singu- 
lar or plural number, for dare not, dares not, 
and dared not. 

Deacon off, to give the cue to ; derived from a 
custom, once universal, but now extinct, in 
our New England Congregational churches. 
An important part of the office of deacon 
was to read aloud the hymns given out by the 
minister, one line at a time, the congregation 
singing each line as soon as read. 

Demmercrat, leadin', one in favor of extending 
slavery ; a free-trade lecturer maintained in 
the custom-house. 

Desput, desperate. 

Do', don't. 

Doos, does. 

Doughface, a contented lick-spittle; a common 
variety of Northern politician. 

Dror, draw. 

Du, do. 

Dunno, dno, do not or does not know. 

Dut, dirt. 

Eend, end. 

Ef , if. 

Emptins, yeast. 

Env'y, envoy. 

Everlasting, an intensive, without reference to 

duration. 
Ev'y, every. 
Ez, as. 

Fence, on the ; said of one who halts between 
two opinions ; a trimmer. 

Fer, for. 

Ferfle, ferful, fearful ; also an intensive. 

Fm\ find. 

Fish -skin, used in New England to clarify 
coffee. 

Fix, a difficulty, a nonplus. 

Foller, folly, to follow. 

Forrerd, forward. 

Frum, from. 

Fur, far. 

Furder, farther. 

Furrer, furrow. Metaphorically, to draw a 
straight furrow is to live uprightly or deco- 
rously. 

Fust, first. 

Gin, gave. 
Git, get. 
Gret, great. 



GLOSSARY TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



459 



Grit, spirit, energy, pluck. 

Grout, to sulk. 

Grouty, crabbed, surly. 

Gum, to impose on. 

Gump, a foolish fellow, a dullard. 

Gut, got. 

Hed, had. 

Heern, heard. 

Helium, helm. 

Hendy, handy. 

Het, heated. 

Hev, have. 

Hez, has. 

Holl, whole. 

Holt, hold. 

Huf , hoof. 

Hull, whole. 

Hum, home. 

Humbug, General Taylor's antislavery. 

Hut, hurt. 

Idno, I do not know. 

In'my, enemy. 

Insines, ensigns ; used to designate both the of- 
ficer who carries the standard, and the stand- 
ard itself. 

Inter, intu, into. 

Jedge, judge. 

Jest, just. 

Jine, join. 

Jint, joint. 

Junk, a fragment of any solid substance. 

Keer, care. 

Kep', kept. 

Killock, a small anchor. 

Kin', kin' o', kinder, kind, kind of. 

Lawth, loath. 

Less, let 's, let us. 

Let daylight into, to shoot. 

Let on, to hint, to confess, to own. 

Lick, to beat, to overcome. 

Lights, the bowels. 

Lily-pads, leaves of the water-lily. 

Long-sweetening, molasses. 

Mash, marsh. 

Mean, stingy, ill-natured. 

Min', mind. 

Nimepunee, ninepence, twelve and a half cents. 
Nowers, nowhere. 

Offen, often. 

Ole, old. 

Oilers, olluz, always. 

On, of; used before it or them, or at the end of 

a sentence, as on H, on 'em, nut ez ever I heerd 

on. 
On'y, only. 
Ossrfer, officer (seldom heard). 

Peaked, pointed. 
Peek, to peep. 



Pickerel, the pike, a fish. 

Pint, point. 

Pocket full of rocks, plenty of money. 

Pooty, pretty. 

Pop'ler, conceited, popular. 

Pus, purse. 

Put out, troubled, vexed. 

Quarter, a quarter-dollar. 
Queen's-arm, a musket. 

Resh, rush. 

Revelee, the reveille. 

Rile, to trouble. 

Riled, angry ; disturbed, as the sediment in any 

liquid. 
Riz, risen. 

Row, a long row to hoe, a difficult task. 
Rugged, robust. 

Sarse, abuse K impertinence. 

Sartin, certain. 

Saxon, sacristan, sexton. 

Scaliest, worst. 

Scringe, cringe. 

Scrouge, to crowd. 

Sech, such. 

Set by, valued. 

Shakes, great, of considerable consequence. 

Shappoes, chapeaux, cocked-hats. 

Sheer, share. 

Shet, shut. 

Shut, shirt. 

Skeered, scared. 

Skeeter, mosquito. 

Skooting, running, or moving swiftly. 

Slarterin', slaughtering. 

Slim, contemptible. 

Snake, crawled like a snake ; but to snake any 
one out is to track him to his hiding-place ; to 
snake a thing out is to snatch it out. 

Soffies, sofas. 

Sogerin', soldiering; a barbarous amusement 
common among men in the savage state. 

Som'ers, somewhere. 

So 'st, so as that. 

Sot, set, obstinate, resolute. 

Spiles, spoils ; objects of political ambition. 

Spry, active. 

Steddles, stout stakes driven into the salt 
marshes, on which the hay-ricks are set, and 
thus raised out of the reach of high tides. 

Streaked, uncomfortable, discomfited. 

Suckle, circle. 

Sutthin', something. 

Suttin, certain. 

Take on, to sorrow. 

Talents, talons. 

Taters, potatoes. 

Tell, till. 

Tetch, touch. 

Tetch tu, £o be able; used always after a nega- 
tive in this sense. 

Tollable, tolerable. 

Toot, used derisively for playing on any wind 
instrument. 



460 



APPENDIX 



Thru, through. 

Thundering, a euphemism common in New 
England for the profane English expression 
devilish. Perhaps derived from the belief, 
common formerly, that thunder was caused 
by the Prince of the Air, for some of whose 
accomplishments consult Cotton Mather. 

Tu, to, too ; commonly has this sound when used 
emphatically, or at the end of a sentence. 
At other times it has the sound of t in tough, 
as, Ware ye goiri 1 tu ? Goin 1 ta Boston. 

Ugly, ill-tempered, intractable. 

Uncle Sam, United States ; the largest boaster 

of liberty and owner of slaves. 
Unrizzest, applied to dough or bread ; heavy, 

most unrisen, or most incapable of rising. 

V-spot, a five-dollar bill. 
Vally, value. 

Wake snakes, to get into trouble. 

Wal, well; spoken with great deliberation, and 

sometimes with the a very much flattened, 

sometimes (but more seldom) very much 

broadened. 
Wannut, walnut {hickory). 
Ware, where. 
Ware, were. 
Whopper, an uncommonly large lie; as, that 

General Taylor is in favor of the Wilmot 

Proviso. 
Wig, Whig ; a party now dissolved. 
Wunt, wilt not. 
Wus, worse. 
Wut, what. 
Wuth, worth; as, Antislavery perfessions ''fore 

Hection aint wuth a Bungtown copper. 
Wuz, was, sometimes were. 

Yaller, yellow. 
Yeller, yellow. 
Yellers, a disease of peach-trees. 

Ti&ck., Ole, a second Washington, an antislavery 
slaveholder ; a humane buyer and seller of men 
and women, a Christian hero generally. 



III. INDEX TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS 

A. wants his axe ground, 247. 

A. B., information wanted concerning, 203. 

Abraham (Lincoln), his constitutional scruples, 

247. 
Abuse, an, its usefulness, 259. 
Adam, eldest son of, respected, 183 — his fall, 

264 — how if he had bitten a sweet apple ? 

267. 
Adam, Grandfather, forged will of, 236. 
-.Eneas goes to hell, 211. 
-<Eolus, a seller of money, as is supposed by 

some, 211. 
.ZEschylus, a saying of, 196, note. 
Alligator, a decent one conjectured to be, in 

some sort, humane, 216. 
Allsmash, the eternal, 251. 



Alphonso the Sixth of Portugal, tyrannical act 
of, 217. 

Ambrose, Saint, excellent (but rationalistic) 
sentiment of, 190. 

" American Citizen," new compost so called, 
211. 

American Eagle, a source of inspiration, 193 — 
hitherto wrongly classed, 196 — long bill of, 
ib. 

Americans bebrothered, 231. 

Amos cited, 190. 

Anakim, that they formerly existed, shown, 
217. 

Angels providentially speak French, 186, — 
conjectured to be skilled in all tongues, ib. 

Anglo-Saxondom, its idea, what, 186. 

Anglo-Saxon mask, 186. 

Anglo-Saxon race, 185. 

Anglo-Saxon verse, by whom carried to perfec- 
tion, 183. 

Anthony of Padua, Saint, happy in his hearers, 
240. 

Antiquaries, Royal Society of Northern, 254. 

Antonius, a speech of, 192 — by whom best re- 
ported, ib. 

Apocalypse, Beast in, magnetic to theologians, 
205. 

Apollo, confessed mortal by his own oracle, 
205. 

Apollyon, his tragedies popular, 202. 

Appian, an Alexandrian, not equal to Shake- 
speare as an orator, 192. 

Applause, popular, the summum bonum, 255. 

Ararat, ignorance of foreign tongues is an, 196. 

Arcadian background, 212. 

Ar c'houskezik, an evil spirit, 240. 

Ardennes, Wild Boar of, an ancestor of Rev. 
Mr. Wilbur, 221. 

Aristocracy, British, their natural sympathies, 
245. 

Aristophanes, 190. 

Arms, profession of, once esteemed especially 
that of gentlemen, 183. 

Arnold, 192. 

Ashland, 212. 

Astor, Jacob, a rich man, 208. 

Astrsea, nineteenth century forsaken by, 211. 

Athenians, ancient, an institution of, 192. 

Atherton, Senator, envies the loon, 199. 

" Atlantic," editors of. See Neptune. 

Atropos, a lady skilful with the scissors, 266. 

Austin, Saint, prayer of, 221. 

Austrian eagle split, 259. 

Aye-aye, the, an African animal, America sup- 
posed to be settled by, 187. 

B., a Congressman, vide A. 

Babel, probably the first Congress, 196 — a 

gabble-mill, ib. 
Baby, a low-priced one, 210. 
Bacon, his rebellion, 241. 
Bacon, Lord, quoted, 240, 241. 
Bagowind, Hon. Mr., whether to be damned, 

200. 
Balcom, Elder Joash Q., 2d, founds a Baptist 

society in Jaalam, A. D. 1830, 273. 
Baldwin apples, 217. 



INDEX TO" THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



461 



Baratarias, real or imaginary, which most 
pleasant, 211. 

Barnum, a great natural curiosity recommended 
to, 195. 

Barrels, an inference from seeing, 217. 

Bartlett, Mr., mistaken, 229. 

Baton Rouge, 212 — strange peculiarities of la- 
borers at, ib. 

Baxter, R., a saying of, 190. 

Bay, Mattysqumscot, 216. 

Bay State, singular effect produced on military 
officers by leaving it, 186. 

Beast, in Apocalypse, a loadstone for whom, 
205 — tenth horn of, applied to recent events, 
265. 

Beaufort, 252. 

Beauregard (real name Toutant), 233, 246. 

Beaver brook, 276. 

Beelzebub, his rigadoon, 199. 

Behmen, his letters not letters, 203. 

Behn, Mrs. Aphra, quoted, 241. 

Bellers, a saloon-keeper, 214 — inhumanly re- 
fuses credit to a presidential candidate, ib. 

Belmont. See Woods. 

Bentley, his heroic method with Milton, 254. 

Bible, not composed for use of colored persons, 
243. 

Biglow, Ezekiel, his letter to Hon. J. T. Buck- 
ingham, 181 — never heard of any one named 
Mundishes, ib. — nearly fourscore years old, ib. 

— his aunt Keziah, a notable saying of, ib. 
Biglow, Hosea, Esquire, excited by composition, 

181 — a poem by, ib., 201 — his opinion of war, 
181 — wanted at home by Nancy, 182 — rec- 
ommends a forcible enlistment of warlike ed- 
itors, ib. — would not wonder, if generally 
agreed with, 183 — versifies letter of Mr. 
Sawin, ib. — a letter from, 184, 194 — his opin- 
ion of Mr. Sawin, 184 — does not deny fun 
at Cornwallis, 184, note — his idea of militia 
glory, 185, note — a pun of, ib. — is uncertain 
in regard to people of Boston, ib. — had never 
heard of Mr. John P. Robinson, 188 — aliquid 
sufflaminandus, ib. — his poems attributed to 
a Mr. Lowell, 189 — is unskilled in Latin, 190 

— his poetry maligned by some, ib. — his dis- 
interestedness, ib. — his deep share in common- 
weal, ib. — his claim to the presidency, ib. — 
his mowing, ib. — resents being called Whig, 
ib. — opposed to tariff, ib. — obstinate, ib. — 
infected with peculiar notions, ib. — reports a 
speech, 191 — emulates historians of antiquity, 
192 — his character sketched from a hostile 
point of view, 196 — a request of his complied 
with, 200 — appointed at a public meeting in 
Jaalam, 204 — confesses ignorance, in one 
minute particular, of propriety, ib. — his 
opinion of cocked hats, ib. — letter to, ib. — 
called " Dear Sir," by a _ general, ib. — prob- 
ably receives same compliment from two hun- 
dred and nine, ib. — picks his apples, 217 — 
his crop of Baldwins conjeeturally large, ib. 

— his labors in writing autographs, 221 — vis- 
its the Judge and has a pleasant time, 229 — 
born in Middlesex County, 232 — his favorite 
walks, ib. — his gifted pen, 249 — born and 
bred in the country, 261 — feels his sap start 



in spring, 262 — is at times unsocial, ib. — the 
school-house where he learned his a b c, ib. — 
falls asleep, 263 — his ancestor a Cromwellian 
colonel, ib. — finds it harder to make up his 
mind as he grows older, 264 — wishes he could 
write a song or two, 267 — liable to moods, 
275 — loves nature and is loved in return, ib. 

— describes some favorite haunts of his, 276 

— his slain kindred, ib. — his speech in March 
meeting, 277 — does not reckon on being sent 
to Congress, 278 — has no eloquence, ib. — his 
own reporter, 279 — never abused the South, 
280 — advises Uncle Sam, ib. — is not Boston- 
mad, ib. — bids farewell, 284. 

Billings, Dea. Cephas, 184. 

Billy, Extra, demagogas, 271. 

Birch, virtue of, in instilling certain of the 
dead languages, 210. 

Bird of our country sings hosanna, 185. 

Bjarna Grimolfsson invents smoking, 254. 

Blind, to go it, 209. 

Blitz pulls ribbons from his mouth, 185. 

Bluenose potatoes, smell of, eagerly desired, 
185. 

Bobolink, the, 262. 

Bobtail obtains a cardinal's hat, 187. 

Boggs, a Norman name, 244. 

Bogus Four-Corners Weekly Meridian, 255. 

Bolles, Mr. Secondary, author of prize peace 
essay, 184 — presents sword to Lieutenant- 
Colonel, ib. — a fluent orator, 185 — found to 
be in error, ib. 

Bonaparte, N., a usurper, 205. 

Bonds, Confederate, their specie basis cutlery, 
226 — when payable (attention, British stock- 
holders !), 251. 

Boot-trees, productive, where, 210. 

Boston, people of, supposed educated, 185, note 

— has a good opinion of itself, 234. 
Bowers, Mr. Arphaxad, an ingenious photo- 
graphic artist, 254. 

Brahmins, navel-contemplating, 203. 

Brains, poor substitute for, 234. 

Bread-trees, 210. 

Bream, their only business, 229. 

Brigadier-Generals in militia, devotion of, 191. 

Brigadiers, nursing ones, tendency in, to liter- 
ary composition, 223. 

Brigitla, viridis, 270. 

Britannia, her trident, 238. 

Brotherhood, subsides after election, 258. 

Brown, Mr., engages in an unequal contest, 200. 

Browne, Sir T., a pious and wise sentiment of, 
cited and commended, 183. 

Brutus Four-Corners, 221. 

Buchanan, a wise and. honest man, 245. 

Buckingham, Hon. J. T., editor of the Boston 
Courier, letters to, 181, 183, 189, 198 — not 
afraid, 184. 

Buffalo, apian hatched there, 215 — plaster, a 
prophecy in regard to, ib. 

Buffaloes, herd of, probable influence of tracts 
upon, 267. 

Bull, John, prophetic allusion to, by Horace, 
231 — his " Run, " 233 — his mortgage, 236 — 
unfortunate dip of, 251 — wool pulled over his 
eyes, 252. 



462 



APPENDIX 



Buncombe, in the other world supposed, 192 — 

mutual privilege in, 246. 
Bung, the eternal, thought to be loose, 182. 
Bungtown Fencibles, dinner of, 187. 
Burke, Mr., his age of chivalry surpassed, 244. 
Burleigh, Lord, quoted for something said in 

Latin long before, 241. 
Burns, Robert, a Scottish poet, 229. 
Bushy Brook, 242. 
Butler, Bishop, 249. 
Butter in Irish bogs, 210. 

C, General, commended for parts, 188 — for 
ubiquity, ib. — for consistency, ib. — for fidel- 
ity, z'6. — is in favor of war, ib. — his curious 
valuation of principle, ib. 

Cabbage-heads, the, always in majority, 279. 

Cabinet, English, makes a blunder, 232. 

Caesar, tribute to, 201 — his veni, vidi, vici, cen- 
sured for undue prolixity, 206. 

Cainites, sect of, supposed still extant, 183. 

Caleb, a monopoly of his denied, 184 — curious 
notions of, as to meaning of " shelter," 186 — 
his definition of Anglo-Saxon, ib. — charges 
Mexicans (not with bayonets but) with im- 
proprieties, ib. 

Calhoun, Hon. J. C, his cow-bell curfew, light 
of the nineteenth century to be extinguished 
at sound of, 197 — cannot let go apron-string 
of the Past, ib. — his unsuccessful tilt at 
Spirit of the Age, ib. — the Sir Kay of mod- 
ern chivalry, ib. — his anchor made of a 
crooked pin, 198 — mentioned, 198, 199. 

Calyboosus, career, 272. 

Cambridge Platform, use discovered for, 187. 

Canaan in quarterly instalments, 255. 

Canary Islands, 210. 

Candidate, presidential, letter from, 204 — 
smells a rat, ib. — against a bank, ib. — takes 
a revolving position, ib. — opinion of pledges, 
ib. — is a periwig, 205 — fronts south by north, 
ib. — qualifications of, lessening, 206 — wooden 
leg (and head) useful to, 209. 

Cape Cod clergyman, what, 187 — Sabbath- 
breakers, perhaps, reproved by, ib. 

Captains, choice of, important, 279. 

Carolina, foolish act of, 280. 

Caroline, case of, 231. 

Carpini, Father John de Piano, among the Tar- 
tars, 217. 

Cartier, Jacques, commendable zeal of, 217. 

Cass, General, 198 — clearness of his merit, 199 
— limited popularity at " Bellers's," 214. _ 

Castles, Spanish, comfortable accommodations 
in, 211. 

Cato, letters of, so called, siispended naso 
adunco, 203. 

C. D., friends of, can hear of him, 203. 

Century, nineteenth, 245. 

Chalk egg, we are protid of incubation of, 203. 

Chamberlayne, Doctor, consolatory citation 
from, 241. 

Chance, an apothegm concerning, 223 — is im- 
patient, 265. 

Chaplain, a one-horse, stern-wheeled variety of, 
225. 

Chappelow on Job, a copy of, lost, 200. 



Charles L, accident to his neck, 265. 

Charles II., his restoration, how brought about, 
264. 

Cherubusco, news of, its effects on English rov- 
alty, 196. 

Chesterfield no letter-writer, 203. 

Chief Magistrate, dancing esteemed sinful bv, 
187. 

Children naturally speak Hebrew, 183. 

China-tree, 210. 

Chinese, whether they invented gunpowder be- 
fore the Christian era not considered, 187. 

Choate hired, 214. 

Christ shuffled into Apocrypha, 187 — conjec- 
tured to disapprove of slaughter and pillage, 
188 — condemns a certain piece of barbarism, 
200. 

Christianity, profession of, plebeian, whether, 
183. 

Christian soldiers, perhaps inconsistent, wheth- 
er, 191. 

Cicero, 279 — an opinion of, disputed, 206. 

Cilley, Ensign, author of nefarious sentiment, 
187. 

Cimex lectularius, 185. 

Cincinnati, old, law and order party of, 259. 

Cincinnatus, a stock character in modern com- 
edy, 212. 

Civilization, progress of, an alias, 200 — rides 
upon a powder-cart, 204. 

Clergymen, their ill husbandry, 200 — their 
place in processions, 212 — some, cruelly ban- 
ished for the soundness of their lungs, 217. 

Clotho, a Grecian lady, 266. 

Cocked-hat, advantages of being knocked into, 
204. 

College of Cardinals, a strange one, 187. 

Colman, Dr. Benjamin, anecdote of, 191. 

Colored folks, curious national diversion of 
kicking, 185. 

Colquitt, a remark of, 199 — acquainted with 
some principles of aerostation, ib. 

Columbia, District of, its peculiar climatic 
effects, 193 — not certain that Martin is for 
abolishing it, 215. 

Columbiads, the true fifteen-inch ones, 258. 

Columbus, a Paul Pry of genius, 203 — will per- 
haps be remembered, 253 — thought by some 
to have discovered America, 281. 

Columby, 213. 

Complete Letter- Writer, fatal gift of, 205. 

Compostella, Saint James of, seen, 186. 

Compromise system, the, illustrated, 257. 

Conciliation, its meaning, 267. 

Congress, singular consequence of getting into, 
193 — a stumbling-block, 246. 

Congressional debates found instructive, 196. 

Constituents, useful for what, 194. 

Constitution trampled on, 198 — to stand upon, 
what, 204. 

Convention, what, 193. 

Convention, Springfield, 193. 

Coon, old, pleasure in skinning, 198. 

Co-operation defined, 244, 245. 

Coppers, caste in picking up of, 208. 

Copres, a monk, his excellent method of argu- 
ing, 197. 



INDEX TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



463 



Corduroy-road, a novel one, 223. 

Corner-stone, patent safety, 246. 

Cornwallis, a, 184 — acknowledged entertaining, 
ib. note. 

Cotton loan, its imaginary nature, 226. 

Cotton Mather, summoned as witness, 186. 

Country, our, its boundaries more exactly de- 
fined, 189 — right or wrong, nonsense about, 
exposed, ib. — lawyers, sent providentially, ib. 
— ^Earth's biggest, gets a soul, 269. 

Courier, The Boston, an unsafe print, 196. 

Court, General, farmers sometimes attain seats 
in, 212. 

Court, Supreme, 247. 

Courts of law, English, their orthodoxy, 255. 

Cousins, British, our ci-devant, 232. 

Cowper, W., his letters commended, 203. 

Credit defined, 251. 

Creditors all on Lincoln's side, 246. 

Creed, a safe kind of, 209. 

Crockett, a good rule of, 226. 

Cruden, Alexander, his Concordance, 222. 

Crusade, first American, 187. 

Cuneiform script recommended, 206. 

Curiosity distinguishes man from brutes, 203. 

Currency, Ethiopian, inconveniences of, 226. 

Cynthia, her hide as a means of conversion, 228. 

Daedalus first taught men to sit on fences, 242. 

Daniel in the lion's den, 225. 

Darkies dread freedom, 246. 

Davis, Captain Isaac, finds out something to 
his advantage, 233. 

Davis, Jefferson (a new species of martyr) has 
the latest ideas on all subjects, 226 — supe- 
rior in financiering to patriarch Jacob, ib. 

— is some, 245 — carries Constitution in his 
hat, 246 — knows how to deal with his Con- 
gress, ib. — astonished at his own piety, 250 

— packed up for Nashville, 252 — tempted to 
believe his own lies, ib. — his snake egg, 257 

— blood on his hands, 277. 

Davis, Mr., of Mississippi, a remark of his, 198. 

Day and Martin, proverbially " on hand," 181. 

Death, rings down curtain, 202. 

De Bow (a famous political economist), 244. 

Delphi, oracle of, surpassed, 196, note — alluded 
to, 205. 

Democracy, false notion of, 247 — its privileges, 
268. 

Demosthenes, 279. 

Destiny, her account^ 195. 

Devil, the, unskilled in certain Indian tongues, 
186 — letters to and from, 204. 

Dey of Tripoli, 197. 

Didymus, a somewhat voluminous grammarian, 
205. 

Dighton rock character might be usefully em- 
ployed in some emergencies, 206. 

Dimitry Bruisgins, fresh supply of, 202. 

Diogenes, his zeal for propagating certain va- 
riety of olive, 210. 

Dioscuri, imps of the pit, 187. 

District- Attorney, contemptible conduct of one, 
197. 

Ditchwater on brain, a too common ailing, 197. 

Dixie, the land of, 246. 



Doctor, the, a proverbial saying of, 186. 

Doe, Hon. Preserved, speech of, 253-260. 

Donatus, profane wish of, 193, note. 

Doughface, yeast-proof, 202. 

Downing Street, 231. 

Drayton, a martyr, 197 — north star, culpable 

for aiding, whether, 199. 
Dreams, something about, 263. 
Dwight, President, a hymn unjustly attributed 

to, 265. 
D. Y., letter of, 203. 

Eagle, national, the late, his estate administered 
upon, 227. 

Earth, Dame, a peep at her housekeeping, 197. 

Eating words, habit of, convenient in time of 
famine, 195. 

Eavesdroppers, 203. 

Echetheus, 187. 

Editor, his position, 200 — commanding pulpit 
of, ib. — large congregation of, ib. — name de- 
rived from what, 201 — fondness for mutton, 
ib. — a pious one, his creed, ib. — a showman, 
202 — in danger of sudden arrest, without 
bail, ib. 

Editors, certain ones who crow like cockerels, 
182. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 274. 

Eggs, bad, the worst sort of, 259. 

Egyptian darkness, phial of, use for, 206. 

Eldorado, Mr. Sawin sets sail for, 210. 

Elizabeth, Queen, mistake of her ambassador, 
192. 

Emerson, 229. 

Emilius, Paulus, 232. 

Empedocles, 203. 

Employment, regular, a good thing, 208. 

Enfield's Speaker, abuse of, 259. 

England, late Mother- Country, her want of 
tact, 230 — merits as a lecturer, ib. — her real 
greatness not to be forgotten, 232 — not con- 
tented (unwisely) with her own stock of fools, 
234 — natural maker of international law, 
ib. — her theory thereof, 235 — makes a par- 
ticularly disagreeable kind of sarse, ib. — 
somewhat given to bullying, ib. — has re- 
spectable relations, ib. — ought to be Colum- 
bia's friend, 236 — anxious to buy an ele- 
phant, 246. 

Epaulets, perhaps no badge of saintship, 188. 

Epimenides, the Cretan Rip Van Winkle, 240. 

Episcopius, his marvelloiis oratory, 217. 

Eric, king of Sweden, his cap, 211. 

Ericsson, his caloric engine, 228. 

Eriksson, Thorwald, slain by natives, 255. 

Essence-peddlers, 247. 

Ethiopian, the, his first need, 249. 

Evangelists, iron ones, 187. 

Eyelids, a divine shield against authors, 197. 

Ezekiel, text taken from, 200. 

Ezekiel would make a poor figure at a caucus, 
260. 

Faber, Johannes, 274. 
Factory-girls, expected rebellion of, 199. 
Facts, their unamiability , 252 — compared to an 
old-fashioned stage-coach, 256. 



464 



APPENDIX 



Falstaffii, legio, 270. 

Family-trees, fruit of jejune, 210 — a primitive 
forest of, 256. 

Faneuil Hall, a place where persons tap them- 
selves for a species of hydrocephalus, 197 — a 
bill of fare mendaciously advertised in, 210. 

Father of country, his shoes, 213. 

Female Papists, cut off in the midst of idol- 
atry, 211. 

Fenianorum, rixce, 270. 

Fergusson, his "Mutual Complaint," etc., 229. 

F. F., singular power of their looks, 246. 

Fire, we all like to play with it, 197. 

Fish, emblematic, but disregarded, where, 197. 

Fitz, Miss Parthenia Almira, a sheresiarch, 
273. 

Flam, President, untrustworthy, 194. 

Flirt, Mrs., 241. 

Flirtilla, elegy on death of, 274. 

Floyd, a taking character, 251. 

Floydus,furcifer, 270. 

Fly-leaves, providential increase of, 197. 

Fool, a cursed, his inalienable rights, 268. 

Foote, Mr., his taste for field-sports, 198. 

Fourier, a squinting toward, 196. 

Fourth of July ought to know its place, 258. 

Fourth of Julys, boiling, 192. 

France, a strange dance begun in, 199 — about 
to put her foot in it, 246. 

Friar John, 232. 

Fuller, Dr. Thomas, a wise saying of, 188. 

Funnel, old, hurraing in, 184. 

Gabriel, his last trump, its pressing nature, 256. 

Gardiner, Lieutenant Lion, 233. 

Gawain, Sir, his amusements, 198. 

Gay, S. H., Esquire, editor of National Anti- 
slavery Standard, letter to, 203. 

Geese, how infallibly to make swans of, 234. 

Gentleman, high-toned Southern, scientifically 
classed, 241, 242. 

Getting up early, 181, 186. 

Ghosts, some, presumed fidgety, (but see Stirl- 
ing's Pneumatology,) 203. 

Giants formerly stupid, 198. 

Gideon, his sword needed, 237. 

Gift of tongues, distressing case of, 196. 

Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 255. 

Globe Theatre, cheap season-ticket to, 202. 

Glory, a perquisite of officers, 208 — her account 
with B. Sawin, Esq., 210. 

Goatsnose, the celebrated interview with, 206. 

God, the only honest dealer, 239. 

Goings, Mehetable, unfounded claim of, dis- 
proved, 230. 

Gomara has a vision, 186 — his relationship to 
the Scarlet Woman, ib. 

Governor, our excellent, 221. 

Grandfather, Mr. Biglow's, safe advice of, 233. 

Grandfathers, the, knew something, 237. 

Grand jurors, Southern, their way of finding a 
true bill, 225. 

Grantus, Dux, 271. 

Gravestones, the evidence of Dissenting ones 
held doubtful, 255. 

Gray's letters are letters, 203. 

Great horn spoon, sworn by, 198. 



Greeks, ancient, whether they questioned can- 
didates, 206. 
Green Man, sign of, 190. 

Habeas corpus, new mode of suspending it, 250. 

Hail Columbia, raised, 225. 

Ham, sandwich, an orthodox (but peculiar) one, 
199— his seed, 243 — their privilege in the 
Bible, ib. — immoral justification of, ib. 

Hamlets, machine for making, 207. 

Hammon, 196, note, 205. 

Hampton Roads, disaster in, 249. 

Hannegan, Mr., something said by, 199. 

Harrison, General, how preserved, 205. 

Hat, a leaky one, 225. 

Hat-trees in full bearing, 210. 

Hawkins, his whetstone, 228. 

Hawkins, Sir John, stout, something he saw, 
210. 

Hawthorne, 229. 

Hay-rick, electrical experiments with, 268. 

Headlong, General, 232. 

Hell, the opinion of some concerning, 26. 
breaks loose, 267. 

Henry the Fourth of England, a Parliament of, 
how named, 192. 

Hens, self-respect attributed to, 223. 

Herb, the Circean, 255. 

Herbert, George, next to David, 240. 

Hercules, his second labor probably what, 217. 

Hermon, fourth-proof dew of, 243. 

Herodotus, story from, 183. 

Hesperides, an inference from, 211. 

Hessians, native American soldiers, 247. 

Hickory, Old, his method, 268. 

Higgses, their natural aristocracy of feeling, 
244. 

Hitchcock, Doctor, 254. 

Hitchcock, the Rev. Jeduthun, colleague of 
Mr. Wilbur, 221 — letter from, containing 
notices of Mr. Wilbur, 265 — ditto, enclos- 
ing macaronic verses, 269 — teacher of high- 
school, 274. 

Hogs, their dreams, 223. 

Holden, Mr. Shearjashub, Preceptor of Jaalam 
Academy, 205 — his knowledge of Greek 
limited, ib. — a heresy of his, ib. — leaves a 
fund to propagate it, ib. 

Holiday, blind man's, 284. 

Hollis, Ezra, goes to Cornwallis, 184. 

Hollow, why men providentially so constructed, 
192. 

Holmes, Dr., author of "Annals of America," 
221. 

Homer, a phrase of, cited, 200. 

Homer, eldest son of Mr. Wilbur, 274. 

Homers, democratic ones, plums left for, 194. 

Hotels, big ones, humbugs, 237. 

House, a strange one described, 223. 

Howell, James, Esq., story told by, 192 — let- 
ters of, commended, 203. 

Huldah, her bonnet, 264. 

Human rights out of order on the floor of Con- 
gress, 198. 

Humbug, ascription of praise to, 202 — gen- 
erally believed in, ib. 

Husbandry, instance of bad, 188. 



INDEX TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



465 



Icarius, Penelope's father, 189. 

Icelander, a certain uncertain, 255. 

Idea, the Southern, its natural foes, 251 — the 
true American, 280. 

Ideas, friction ones unsafe, 258. 

Idyl defined, 229. 

Indecision, mole-blind, 280. 

Infants, prattlings of, curious observation con- 
cerning', 183. 

Information wanted (universally, but especially 
at page), 203. 

Ishmael, young, 238. 

Jaalam, unjustly neglected by great events, 255. 

Jaalam Centre, Anglo-Saxons unjustly sus- 
pected by the young ladies there, 186 — " In- 
dependent Blunderbuss," strange conduct of 
editor of, 200 — public meeting at, 204 — 
meeting-bouse ornamented with imaginary 
clock, 211. 

Jaalam, East Parish of, 222. 

alam Point, lighthouse on, charge of, pro- 
spectively offered to Mr. H. Biglow, 205. 

jacobus, rex, 270. 

Jakes, Captain 216 — reproved for avarice, 
ib. # 

Jamaica, 280. 

James the Fourth, of Scots, experiment by, 
183. 

Jarnagin, Mr., his opinion of the completeness 
of Northern education, 199. 

Jefferson, Thomas, well-meaning, but injudi- 
cious, 258. 

Jeremiah, hardly the best guide in modern 
politics, 260. 

Jerome, Saint, his list of sacred writers, 203. 

Jerusha, ex-Mrs. Sawin, 227. 

Job, Book of, 183, 222 — Chappelow on, 200. 

Johnson, Andrew, as he used to be, 258 — as he 
is : see Arnold, Benedict. 

Johnson, Mr., communicates some intelligence, 
199. 

Jonah, the inevitable destiny of, 199 — proba- 
bly studied internal economy of the cetacea, 
203 — his gourd, 243 — his unanimity in the 
whale, 245. 

Jonathan to John, 238. 

Jortin, Dr., cited, 191, 196, note. 

Journals, British, their brutal tone, 231, 

Juanito, 253. 

Judea, everything not known there, 189 — not 
identical with A. D., 264. 

Judge, the, his garden, 229 — his hat covers 
many things, ib. 

Juvenal, a saying of, 195, note. 

Kay, Sir, the, of modern chivalry, 197. 

Key, brazen one, 197. 

Keziah, Aunt, profound observation of, 181. 

Kinderhook, 212. 

Kingdom Come, march to, easy, 207. 

Konigsmark, Count, 183. 

Lablache surpassed, 248. 
Lacedaemonians banish a great talker, 197. 
Lamb, Charles, his epistolary excellence, 203. 
Latimer, Bishop, episcopizes Satan, 183. 



Latin tongue, curious information concerning, 
190. 

Laxincelot, Sir, a trusser of giants formerly, 
perhaps would find less sport therein now, 
198. 

Laura, exploited, 274. 

Learning, three-story, 262. 

Letcher, de la vieille roche, 244. 

Letcherus, nebulo, 270. 

Letters classed, 203 — their shape, 204 — of 
candidates, 205 — often fatal, ib. 

Lettres Cabalistiques, quoted, 231. 

Lewis, Dixon H., gives his view of slavery, 199. 

Lewis Philip, a scourger of young native Amer- 
icans, 196 — commiserated (though not de- 
serving it), 196, note. 

Lexington, 233. 

Liberator, a newspaper, condemned by implica- 
tion, 190. 

Liberty, unwholesome for men of certain com- 
plexions, 201. 

Licking, when constitutional, 247. 

Lignum vitse, a gift of this valuable wood pro- 
posed, 186. 

Lincoln, too shrewd to hang Mason and Slidell, 
252. 

Literature, Southern, its abundance, 244. 

Little Big Boosy River, 227. 

Longinus recommends swearing, 184, note (Fu- 
seli did same thing). 

Long-sweetening recommended, 207. 

Lord, inexpensive way of lending to, 226. 

Lords, Southern, prove pur sang by ablution, 
244. 

Lost arts, one sorrowfully added to list of, 217. 

Louis the Eleventh of France, some odd trees 
of his, 210. 

Lowell, Mr. J. R., unaccountable silence of, 
189, 190. 

Luther, Martin, his first appearance as Europa, 
186. 

Lyseus, 272. 

Lyttelton, Lord, his letters an imposition, 203. 

Macrobii, their diplomacy, 206. 

Magoffin, a name naturally noble, 244. 

Mahomet, got nearer Sinai than some, 200. 

Mahound, his filthy gobbets, 186. 

Mandeville, Sir John, quoted, 231. 

Mangum, Mr., speaks to the point, 198. 

Manichsean, excellently confuted, 197. 

Man-trees, grow where, 210. 

Maori chieftains, 230. 

Mapes, Walter, quoted, 232 — paraphrased, ib. 

Mares'-nests, finders of, benevolent, 203. 

Marius, quoted, 241. 

Marshfield, 212. 

Martin, Mr. Sawin used to vote for him, 215. 

Mason and Dixon's line, slaves north of, 198. 

Mason an F. F. V., 252. 

Mason and Slidell, how they might have been 
made at once useful and ornamental, 252. 

Mass, the, its duty defined, 198. 

Massachusetts on her knees, 182 ; something 
mentioned in connection with, worthy the 
attention of tailors, 193; citizen of, baked, 
boiled, and roasted (nefandum /), 209. 



4 66 



APPENDIX 



Masses, the, used as butter by some, 194. 
Maury, an intellectual giant, twin birth with 

Simms (which see), 244. 
Mayday a humbug, 261. 
M. C, an invertebrate animal, 195. 
Me, Mister, a queer creature, 262. 
Mechanics' Fair, reflections suggested at, 206. 
Medium, ardentispirituale, 270. 
Mediums, spiritual, dreadful liars, 264. 
Memminger, old, 226. 
Mentor, letters of, dreary, 203. 
Mephistopheles at a nonplus, 199. 
Mexican blood, its effect in raising price of 

cloth, 211. 
Mexican polka, 187. 
Mexicans charged with various breaches of 

etiquette, 186 — kind feelings beaten into 

them, 202. 
Mexico, no glory in overcoming, 193. 
Middleton, Thomas, quoted, 241. 
Military glory spoken disrespectfully of, 185, 

note — militia treated still worse, ib. 
Milk-trees, growing still, 210. 
Mill, Stuart, his low ideas, 251. 
Millenniums apt to miscarry, 264. 
Millspring, 252. 
Mills for manufacturing gabble, how driven, 

196. 
Mills, Josiah's, 262. 
Milton, an unconscious plagiary, 192, note — a 

Latin verse of, cited, 201 — an English poet, 

254 — his " Hymn of the Nativity," 266. 
Missionaries, useful to alligators, 224 — culi- 
nary liabilities of, 243. 
Missions, a profitable kind of, 201. 
Monarch, a pagan, probably not favored in 

philosophical experiments, 183. 
Money-trees, desirable, 210 — that they once 

existed shown to be variously probable, ib. 
Montaigne, 274. 

Montaigne, a communicative old Gascon, 203. 
Monterey, battle of, its singular chromatic 

effect on a species of two-headed eagle, 

195. 
Montezuma, licked, 224. 
Moody, Seth, his remarkable gun, 227 — his 

brother Asaph, ib. 
Moquis Indians, praiseworthy custom of, 255. 
Moses, held up vainly as an example, 200 — 

construed by Joe Smith, ib. — (not, A. J. 

Moses) prudent way of following, 255. 
Muse invoked, 270. 
Myths, how to interpret readily, 206. 

Naboths, Popish ones, how distinguished, 187. 

Nana Sahib, 230. 

Nancy, presumably Mrs. Biglow, 233. 

Napoleon III., his new chairs, 250. 

Nation, rights of, proportionate to size, 186 — 

young, its first needs, 250. 
National pudding, its effect on the organs of 

speech, a curious physiological fact, 187. 
Negroes, their double usefulness, 226 — getting 

too current, 251. 
Nephelim, not yet extinct, 217. 
New England overpoweringly honored, 195 — 

wants no more speakers, ib. — done brown by 



whom, ib. — her experience in beans beyond 

Cicero's, 206. 
Newspaper, the, wonderful, 202 — a strolling 

theatre, ib. — thoughts suggested by tearing 

wrapper of, ib. — a vacant sheet, ib. — a sheet 

in which a vision was let down, 203 — wrapper 

to a bar of soap, ib. — a cheap impromptu 

platter, ib. 
New World, apostrophe to, 238. 
New York, letters from, commended, 203. 
Next life, what, 200. 
Nieotiana Tabacum, a weed, 254. 
Niggers, 182 — area of abusing, extended, 193 — 

Mr. Sawin's opinions of, 215. 
Ninepenee a day low for murder, 184. 
No, a monosyllable, 187 — hard to utter, ib. 
Noah enclosed letter in bottle, probably, 203. 
Noblemen, Nature's, 245. 
Nomas, Lapland, what, 211. 
North, the, has no business, 198 — bristling, 

crowded off roost, 205 — its mind naturally 

unprincipled, 258. 
North Bend, geese inhumanly treated at, 205 — ' 

mentioned, 212. 
North star, a proposition to indict, 199. 
Northern Dagon, 227. _ 
Northmen, gens inclytissima, 253. 
Notre Dame de la Haine, 242. 
Now, its merits, 262. 
Nowhere, march to, 263. 

O'Brien, Smith, 230. 

Off ox, 204. 

Officers, miraculous transformation in character 

of, 186 — Anglo-Saxon, come very near being 

anathematized, ib. 
Old age, an advantage of, 229. 
Old One, invoked, 248. 
Onesimus made to serve the cause of impiety, 

243. 
O'Phaee, Increase D., Esq., speech of, 191. 
Opinion, British, its worth to us, 232. 
Opinions, certain ones compared to winter flies, 

240. 
Oracle of Fools, still respectfully consulted, 

192. 
Orion becomes commonplace, 202. 
Orrery, Lord, his letters (lord !), 203. 
Ostracism, curious species of, 192. 
Ovidii Nasonie, carmen supposititium, 270. 

Palestine, 186. 

Paley, his Evidences, 283. 

Palfrey, Hon. J. G., 192, 195, (a worthy repre- 
sentative of Massachusetts). 

Pantagruel, recommends a popular oracle, 192. 

Panurge, 232 — his interview with Goatsnose, 
206. 

Paper, plausible-looking, wanted, 250. 

Papists, female, slain by zealous Protestant 
bomb-shell, 211. 

Paralipomenon, a man suspected of being, 205. 

Paris, liberal principles safe as far away as, 
201. 

Parliamentum Indoctorum sitting in perma- 
nence, 192. 

Past, the, a good nurse, 197. 



INDEX TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



467 



Patience, sister, quoted, 185. 

Patriarchs, the, illiterate, 228. 

Patricius, brogipote?is, 270. 

Paynims, their throats propagandistieally cut, 
186. 

Penelope, her wise choice, 189. 

People, soft enough, 201 — want correct ideas, 
209 — the, decline to be Mexicanized, 256. 

Pepin, King, 203. 

Pepperell, General, quoted, 233. 

Pequash Junction, 274. 

Periwig, 205. 

Perley, Mr. Asaph, has charge of bass-viol, 
240. 

Perseus, King, his avarice, 232. 

Persius, a pithy saying of, 194, note. 

Pescara, Marquis, saying of, 183. 

Peter, Saint, a letter of (jpost-mortem), 203. 

Petrarch, exploited Laura, 274. 

Petronius, 232. 

Pettibone, Jabez, bursts up, 245. 

Pettus came over with Wilhelmus Conquistor, 
244. 

Phaon, 274. 

Pharaoh, his lean kine, 237. 

Pharisees, opprobriously referred to, 201. 

Philippe, Louis, in pea-jacket, 202. 

Phillips, Wendell, catches a Tartar, 259. 

Phlegyas quoted, 200. 

Phrygian language, whether Adam spoke it, 
183. 

Pickens, a Norman name, 244. 

Pilcoxes, genealogy of, 221. 

Pilgrim Father, apparition of, 263. 

Pilgrims, the, 193. 

Pillows, constitutional, 195. 

Pine-trees, their sympathy, 262. 

Pinto, Mr., some letters of his commended, 
203. 

Pisgah, an impromptu one, 211. 

Platform, party, a convenient one, 209. 

Plato, supped with, 203 — his man, 205. 

Pleiades, the, not enough esteemed, 202. 

Pliny, his letters not admired, 203. 

Plotinus, a story of, 197. 

Plymouth Rock, Old, a Convention wrecked 
on, 193. 

Poets apt to become sophisticated, 260. 

Point Tribulation, Mr. Sawin wrecked on, 
210. 

Poles, exile, whether crop of beans depends on, 
185, note. 

Polk, nomen gentile, 244. 

Polk, President, synonymous with our country, 
189 — censured, 193 — in danger of being 
crushed, 194. 

Polka, Mexican, 187. 

Pomp, a runaway slave, his nest, 215 — hypo- 
critically groans like white man, ib. — blind 
to Christian privileges, 216 — his society val- 
ued at fifty dollars, ib. — his treachery, ib. — 
takes Mr. Sawin prisoner, ib. — cruelly makes 
him work, ib. — puts himself illegally under 
his tuition, ib. — dismisses him with contu- 
melious epithets, 217 — a negro, 223. 

Pontifical bull, a tamed one, 186. 

Pope, his verse excellent, 183. 



Pork, refractory in boiling, 186. 

Portico, the, 273. 

Portugal, Alphonso the Sixth of, a monster, 
217. 

Post, Boston, 189 — shaken visibly, 190 — bad 
guide-post, ib. — too swift, ib. — edited by a 
colonel, ib. — who is presumed officially in 
Mexico, ib. — referred to, 196. 

Pot-hooks, death in, 206. 

Power, a first-class, elements of, 250. 

Preacher, an ornamental symbol, 200 — a 
breeder of dogmas, ib. — earnestness of, im- 
portant, 217. 

Present, considered as an annalist, 200 — not 
long wonderful, 202. 

President, slaveholding natural to, 201 — must 
be a Southern resident, 210 — must own a 
nigger, ib. — the, his policy, 281 — his resem- 
blance to Jackson, ib. 

Princes mix cocktails, 250. 

Principle, exposure spoils it, 192. 

Principles, bad, when less harmful, 188 — when 
useless, 258. 

Professor, Latin, in College, 269 — Scaliger, 

270. 

Prophecies, fulfilment of, 252. 

Prophecy, a notable one, 196, note. 

Prospect Hill, 233. 

Providence has a natural life-preserver, 237. 

Proviso, bitterly spoken of, 204. 

Prudence, sister, her idiosyncratic teapot, 208. 

Psammeticus, an experiment of, 183. 

Psyche, poor, 275. 

Public opinion, a blind and drunken guide, 187 
— nudges Mr. Wilbur's elbow, ib. — ticklers 
of, 194. 

Punkin Falls "Weekly Parallel," 265. 

Putnam, General Israel, his fines, 233. 

Pythagoras a bean-hater, why, 205. 

Pythagoreans, fish reverenced by, why, 197. 

Quid, ingens nicotianum, 271. 
Quixote, Don, 198. 

Rafn, Professor, 254. 

Rag, one of sacred college, 187. 

Rantoul, Mr., talks loudly, 185 — pious reason 

for not enlisting, ib. 
Recruiting sergeant, Devil supposed the first, 

183. 
Religion, Southern, its commercial advantages, 

242. 
Representatives' Chamber, 197. 
Rhinothism, society for promoting, 203. 
Rhyme, whether natural not considered, 183. 
Rib, an infrangible one, 207. 
Richard the First of England, his Christian 

fervor, 186. 
Riches conjectured to have legs as well as 

wings, 199. 
Ricos Hombres, 241. 
Ringtail Rangers, 228. 
Roanoke Island, 252. 
Robinson, Mr. John P., his opinions fully stated, 

188, 189. 
Rocks, pocket full of, 208. 
Roosters in rainy weather, their misery, 223. 



468 



APPENDIX 



Rotation insures mediocrity and inexperience, 

247. 
Rough and ready, 213 — a Wig, 214 — a kind of 

scratch, ib. 
Royal Society, American fellows of, 265. 
Rum and water combine kindly, 256. 
Runes resemble bird-tracks, 254. 
Runic inscriptions, their different grades of un- 

intelligibility and consequent value, 254. 
Russell, Earl, is good enough to expound our 

Constitution for us, 230. 
Russian eagle turns Prussian blue, 195. 
Byeus, Bacchi epitheton, 272. 

Sabbath, breach of, 176. 

Sabellianism, one accused of, 205. 

Sailors, their rights how won, 236. 

Saltillo, unfavorable view of, 185. 

Salt-river, in Mexican, what, 185. 

Samuel, avunculus, 271. 

Samuel, Uncle, 224 — riotous, 195 — yet has 
qualities demanding reverence, 201 — a good 
provider for his family, ib. — an exorbitant 
bill of, 211 — makes some shrewd guesses, 
238, 239 — expects his boots, 245. 

Sansculottes, draw their wine before drinking, 
199. 

Santa Anna, his expensive leg, 209. 

Sappho, some human nature in, 271. 

Sassycus, an impudent Indian, 233. 

Satan, never wants attorneys, 186 — an expert 
talker by signs, ib. — a successful fisherman 
with little or no bait, 187 — cunning fetch of, 
188 — dislikes ridicule, 190 — ought not to 
have credit of ancient oracles, 196, note — his 
worst pitfall, 243. 

Satirist, incident to certain dangers, 188. 

Savages, Canadian, chance of redemption of- 
fered to, 217. 

Sawin, B., Esquire, his letter not written in 
verse, 183 — a native of Jaalam, ib, — not 
regular attendant on Rev. Mr. Wilbur's 
preaching, ib. — a fool, 184 — his statements 
trustworthy, ib. — his ornithological tastes, 
ib.— letters from, 183, 206, 212 — his curious 
discovery in regard to bayonets, 184 — dis- 
plays proper family pride, ib. — modestly con- 
fesses bimself less wise than the Queen of 
Sheba, 186 — the old Adam in, peeps out, ib. 

— a miles emeritus, 206 — is made text for a 
sermon, i'6. — loses a leg, 207 — an eye, ib. — 
left hand, ib. — four fingers of right hand, ib. 

— has six or more ribs broken, ib. — a rib of 
his infrangible, ib. — allows a certain amount 
of preterite greenness in himself, ib. — his 
share of spoil limited, 208 — his opinion of 
Mexican climate, ib. — acquires property of a 
certain sort, ib. — his experience of glory, ib. 

— stands sentry, and puns thereupon, 209 — 
undergoes martyrdom in some of its most 
painful forms, ib. — enters the candidating 
business, ib. — modestly states the (avail) 
abilities which qualify him for high politi- 
cal station, ib. — has no principles, ib. — a 
peace-man, ib. — unpledged, ib. — has no ob- 
jections to owning peculiar property, but 
would not like to monopolize the truth, 210 



— his account with glory, ib. — a selfish mo- 
tive hinted in, ib. — sails for Eldorado, ib. — 
shipwrecked on a metaphorical promontory, 
ib. — parallel between, and Rev. Mr. Wilbur 
(not Plutarchian), 211 — conjectured to have 
bathed in river Selemnus, 212 — loves plough 
wisely, but not too well, £6. — a foreign mis- 
sion probably expected by, ib. — unanimously 
nominated for presidency, ib. — his country's 
father-in-law, 213 — nobly emulates Cincin- 
natus, ib. — is not a crooked stick, ib. — ad- 
vises his adherents, ib. — views of, on present 
state of politics, 213-215 — popular enthusi- 
asm for, at Bellers's, and its disagreeable 
consequences, 214 — inhuman treatment of, 
by Betters, ib. — his opinion of the two par- 
ties, ib. — agrees with Mr. Webster, ib. — 
his antislavery zeal, 215 — his proper self- 
respect, ib. — his unaffected piety, ib. — his 
not intemperate temperance, ib. — a thrilling 
adventure of, 215-217 — his prudence and 
economy, 215 — bound to Captain Jakes, but 
regains his freedom, 216 — is taken prisoner, 
ib. — ignominiously treated, ib. — his conse- 
quent resolution, 217. 
Sawin, Honorable B. O'F., a vein of humor sus- 
pected in, 222 — gets into an enchanted castle, 
223 — finds a wooden leg better in some re- 
spects than a living one, 224 — takes some- 
thing hot, ib. — his experience of Southern 
hospitality, ib. — waterproof internally, ib. — 
sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, 225 — 
his liberal-handedness, 226 — gets his arrears 
of pension, ib. — marries the widow Shamion, 
227 — confiscated, ib. — finds in himself a nat- 
ural necessity of income, 228 — his missionary 
zeal, ib. — never a stated attendant on Mr. 
Wilbur's preaching, 239 — sang bass in choir, 
240 — prudently avoided contribution toward 
bell, ib. — abhors a covenant of works, 242 — 
if saved at all, must be saved genteelly, ib. — 
reports a sermon, 243 — experiences religion, 
ib. — would consent to a dukedom, 244 — con- 
verted to unanimity, 245 — sound views of, 

247 — makes himself an extempore marquis, 

248 — extract of letter from, 283, 284 — his 
opinion of Paddies, 284 — of Johnson, ib. 

Sayres, a martyr, 197. 

Scaliger, saying of, 188. 

Scarabosus pilularius, 185. 

Scott, General, his claims to the presidency, 
190, 191. 

Scrimgour, Rev. Shearjashub, 273. 

Scythians, their diplomacy commended, 206. 

Sea, the wormy, 255. 

Seamen, colored, sold, 182. 

Secessia, licta, 271. 

Secession, its legal nature defined, 227. 

Secret, a great military, 260. 

Selemnus, a sort of Lethean river, 212. 

Senate, debate in, made readable, 197. 

Seneca, saying of, 188 — another, 196, note — 
overrated by a saint (but see Lord Boling- 
broke's opinion of, in a letter to Dean Swift), 
203 — his letters not commended, ib. — a son 
of Rev. Mr. Wilbur, 211 — quoted, 266, 267. 

Serbonian bog of literature, 197. 



INDEX TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



469 



Sermons, some pitched too high, 240. 

Seward, Mister, the late, his gift of prophecy, 
233, — needs stiffening, 281 — misunderstands 
parable of fatted calf, ib. 

Sextons, demand for, 185 — heroic official devo- 
tion of one, 217. 

Seymour, Governor, 267. 

Shakespeare, 274 — a good reporter, 192. 

Shaking fever, considered as an employment, 
208. 

Sham, President, honest, 194. 

Shannon, Mrs., a widow, 225 — her family and 
accomplishments, 227 — has tantrums, ib. — 
her religious views, 242 — her notions of a 
moral and intellectual being, 243 — her 
maiden name, 244 — her blue blood, ib. 

Sheba, Queen of, 186. 

Sheep, none of Rev. Mr. Wilbur's turned 
wolves, 183. 

Shem, Scriptural curse of, 217. 

Shiraz Centre, lead-mine at, 245. 

Shirley, Governor, 233. 

Shoddy, poor covering for outer or inner man, 
264. 

Shot at sight, privilege of being, 245. 

Show, natural to love it, 185, note. 

Silver spoon born in Democracy's mouth, what, 
194. 

Simms, an intellectual giant, twin-birth with 
Maury (which see), 244. 

Sin, wilderness of, modern, what, 200. 

Sinai suffers outrages, 200. _ 

Skim-milk has its own opinions, 264. 

Skin, hole in, strange taste of some for, 208. 

Skippers, Yankee, busy in the slave-trade, 243. 

Slaughter, whether God strengthen us for, 187. 

Slaughterers and soldiers compared, 212. 

Slaughtering nowadays is slaughtering, 212. 

Slavery, of no color, 182 — corner-stone of lib- 
erty, 196 — also keystone, 198 — last crumb 
of Eden, 199 — a Jonah, ib. — an institution, 
204 — a private State concern, 215. 

SlideU, New York trash, 252. 

Sloanshure, Habakkuk, Esquire, President of 
Jaalam Bank, 248. 

Smith, Joe, used, as a translation, 200. 

Smith, John, an interesting character, 203. 

Smith, Mr., fears entertained for, 200 — dined 
with, 203. 

Smith, N. B., his magnanimity, 202. 

Smithius, dux, 270. 

Soandso, Mr., the great, defines his position, 
202. 

Soft-heartedness, misplaced, is soft-headedness, 
268. 

Sol, the fisherman, 185 — soundness of respira- 
tory organs hypothetically attributed to, ib. 

Soldiers, British, ghosts of, insubordinate, 234. 

Solomon, Song of, portions of it done into Latin 
verse by Mr. Wilbur, 269. 

Solon, a saying of, 187. 

Soul, injurious properties of, 247. 

South, its natural eloquence, 259 — facts have a 
mean spite against, 252, 253. 

South Carolina, futile attempt to anchor, 198 — 
her pedigrees, 241. 

Southern men, their imperfect notions of labor, 



225 — of subscriptions, 225, 226 — too high- 
pressure, 228 — prima facie noble, 244. 

Spanish, to walk, what, 186. 

Speech-making, an abuse of gift of speech, 196. 

Spirit-rapping does not repay the spirits engaged 
in it, 264. 

Split-Foot, Old, made to squirm, 228. 

Spring, described, 261, 262. 

Star, north, subject to indictment, whether, 
199. 

Statesman, a genuine, defined, 258. 

Stearns, Othniel, fable by, 282. 

Stone Spike, the, 234. 

Store, cheap cash, a wicked fraud, 211. 

Strong, Governor Caleb, a patriot, 189. 

Style, the catalogue, 262. 

Sumter, shame of, 237. 

Sunday should mind its own business, 258. 

Swearing commended as a figure of speech, 184, 
note. 

Swett, Jethro C, his fall, 277. 

Swift, Dean, threadbare saying of, 190. 

Tag, elevated to the Cardinalate, 187. 

Taney, C. J., 247, 256. 

Tarandfeather, Rev. Mr., 245. 

Tarbox, Shearjashub, first white child born in 

Jaalam, 230. 
Tartars, Mongrel, 224. 
Taxes, direct, advantages of, 211. 
Taylor, General, greased by Mr. Choate, 214. 
Taylor zeal, its origin, 214. 
Teapots, how made dangerous, 267. 
Ten, the upper, 245. 

Tesephone, banished for long-windedness, 197. 
Thacker, Rev. Preserved, D. D., 265. 
Thanks get lodged, 208. 
Thanksgiving, Feejee, 224. 
Thaumaturgus, Saint Gregory, letter of, to the 

Devil, 203. 
Theleme, Abbey of, 248. 

Theocritus, the inventor of idyllic poetry, 229. 
Theory, defined, 256. 
Thermopylses, too many, 252. 
" They '11 say " a notable bully, 236. 
Thirty-nine articles might be made serviceable, 

187. 
Thor, a foolish attempt of, 198. 
Thoreau, 229. 

Thoughts, live ones characterized, 275. 
Thumb, General Thomas, a valuable member 

of society, 195. 
Thunder, supposed in easy circumstances, 207. 
Thynne, Mr., murdered, 183. 
Tibulhis, 266. 
Time, an innocent personage to swear by, 184, 

note — a scene-shifter, 202. 
Tinkham, Deacon Pelatiah, story concerning, 

not told, 225 — alluded to, 229 — does a very 

sensible thing, 242. 
Toms, Peeping, 203. 
Toombs, a doleful sound from, 253. 
Trees, various kinds of extraordinary ones, 210. 
Trowbridge, William, mariner, adventure of, 

187. 
Truth and falsehood start from same point, 188 

— truth invulnerable to satire, ib. — compared 



47° 



APPENDIX 



to a river, 192 — of fiction sometimes truer 

than fact, ib. — told plainly, passim. 
Tuileries, exciting scene at, 196 — front parlor 

of, 250. 
Tully, a saying of, 192, note. 
Tunnel, Northwest-Passage, a poor investment, 

248. 
Turkey-Buzzard Roost, 227. 
Tuscaloosa, 227. 

Tutchel, Rev. Jonas, a Sadducee, 255. 
Tweedledee, gospel according to, 201. 
Tweedledum, great principles of, 201. 
Tylerus, juvenis insignis, 270 — porphyrogenitus, 

271 — Iohanides, flito ceteris, ib. — bene titus, 

272. 
Tyrants, European, how made to tremhle, 225. 

Ulysses, husband of Penelope, 189 — borrows 
money, 211 (for full particulars of, see Homer 
and Dante) — rex, 270. 

Unanimity, new ways of producing, 245. 

Union, its hoops off, 245 — its good old mean- 
ing, 256. # 

Universe, its breeching, 246. 

University, triennial catalogue of, 191. 

Us, nobody to be compared with, 225 — and see 
World, passim. 

Van Buren, fails of gaining Mr. Sawin's confi- 
dence, 215 — his son John reproved, ib. 

Van, Old, plan to set up, 215. 

Vattel, as likely to fall on your toes as on mine, 
238. 

Venetians invented something once, 211. 

Vices, cardinal, sacred conclave of, 187. 

Victoria, Queen, her natural terror, 195 — her 
best carpets, 250. 

Vinland, 255. 

Virgin, the, letter of, to Magistrates of Messina, 
203. 

Virginia, descripta, 270. 

Virginians, their false heraldry, 240. 

Voltaire, esprit de, 270. 

Vratz, Captain, a Pomeranian, singular views 
of, 183. 

Waehuset Mountain, 236. 

Wait, General, 232. 

Wales, Prince of, calls Brother Jonathan con- 
sanguineus noster, 231 — but had not, appar- 
ently, consulted the Garter King at Arms, ib. 

Walpple, Horace, classed, 203 — his letters 

W praised, ib. 
altham Plain, Cornwallis at, 184. 

Walton, punctilious in his intercourse with 
fishes, 187. 

War, abstract, horrid, 204 — its hoppers, grist 
of, what, 208. 

Warren, Fort, 267. 

Warton, Thomas, a story of, 191. 

Washington, charge brought against, 213. 

Washington, city of, climatic influence of, on 
coats, 193 — mentioned, 197 — grand jury of, 
199. 

Washingtons, two hatched at a time by im- 
proved machine, 213. 

Watchmanus, noctivagus, 272. 



Water, Taunton, proverbially weak, 215. 

Water-trees, 210. 

Weakwash, a name fatally typical, 233. 

Webster, bis unabridged quarto, its deleterious- 
ness, 269. 

Webster, some sentiments of, commended by 
Mr. Sawin, 214. 

Westcott, Mr., his horror, 199. 

Whig party has a large throat, 190 — but query 
as to swallowing spurs, 214. 

White : house, 205. 

Wiekliffe, Robert, consequences of his burst- 
ing, 267. 

Wife-trees, 210. 

Wilbur, Mrs. Dorcas (Pilcox), an invariable 
rule of, 191 — her profile, ib. — tribute to, 
265. 

Wilbur, Rev. Homer, A. M., consulted, 181 — 
his instructions to his flock, 183 — a propo- 
sition of his for Protestant bomb-shells, 187 — 
his elbow nudged, ib. — his notions of satire, 
188 — some opinions of his quoted with ap- 
parent approval by Mr. Biglow, 189 — geo- 
graphical speculations of, ib. — a justice of 
the peace, ib. — a letter of, ib. — a Latin pun 
of, 190 — runs against a post without injury, 
ib. — does not seek notoriety (whatever some 
malignants may affirm), i b. —fits youths for 
college, 191 — a chaplain during late war 
with England, ib. — a shrewd observation of, 
192 — some curious speculations of, 196, 197 — 
his Martello-tower, 196 — forgets he is not in 
pulpit, 200, 206 — extracts from sermon of, 
200,201, 202 — interested in John Smith, 203 

— his views concerning present state of let- 
ters, ib. — a stratagem of, 205 — ventures two 
hundred and fourth interpretation of Beast in 
Apocalypse, ib. — christens Hon. B. Sawin, 
then an infant, 206 — an addition to our sylva 
proposed by, 210 — curious and instructive 
adventure of, 211 — his account with an un- 
natural uncle, ib. — his uncomfortable imagi- 
nation, ib. — speculations concerning Cincin- 
natus, 212 — confesses digressive tendency of 
mind, 217 — goes to work on sermon (not 
without fear that his readers will dub him 
with a reproachful epithet like that with 
which Isaac Allerton, a Mayflower man, re- 
venges himself on a delinquent debtor of his, 
calling him in his will, and thus holding him 
up to posterity, as " John Peterson, The 
Bobb "), ib. — his modesty, 220 — disclaims 
sole authorship of Mr. Biglow's writings, 221 

— his low opinion of prepensive autographs, 
ib.—a chaplain in 1812, 222 — cites a hea- 
then comedian, ib. — his fondness for the 
Book of Job, ib. — preaches a Fast- Day dis- 
course, 223 — is prevented from narrating a 
singular occurrence, ib. — is presented with a 
pair of new spectacles, 228 — his church ser- 
vices indecorously sketched by Mr. Sawin, 
243 — hopes to decipher a Runic inscription, 
248 — a fable by, ib. — deciphers Runic in- 
scription, 253-255 — his method therein, 254 

— is ready to reconsider his opinion of to- 
bacco, 255 — his opinion of the Puritans, 260 — 
his death, 265 — born in Pigsgusset, ib. — let- 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



47i 



ter of Rev. Mr. Hitchcock concerning, 265, 
266 — fond of Milton's Christmas hymn, 266 
— his monument (proposed), ib. — his epitaph, 
{6. — his last letter, 266, 267 — his supposed 
disembodied spirit, 269— table belonging to, 
ib. — sometimes wrote Latin verses, ib. — his 
table-talk, 272-275— his prejudices, 273 — 
against Baptists, ib. — his sweet nature, 277 
— his views of style, 278 — a story of his, ib. 

Wildbore, a vernacular one, how to escape, 197. 

Wilkes, Captain, borrows rashly, 234. 

Wind, the, a good Samaritan, 206. 

Wingfield, his "Memorial," 241. 

Wooden leg, remarkable for sobriety, 207 — 
never eats pudding, ib. 

Woods, the. See Belmont. 

Works, covenants of, condemned, 242. 

World, this, its unhappy temper, 223. 

Wright, Colonel, providentially rescued, 185. 

Writing, dangerous to reputation, 222. 

Wrong, abstract, safe to oppose, 194. 

Yankees, their worst wooden nutmegs, 253. 
Zack, Old, 213. 

IV. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 111. On any pot that ever drew tea. 

When Mr. Garrison visited Edinburgh in 
1846, a handsome silver tea-set was presented 
to him by his friends in that city. On the ar- 
rival of this gift at the Boston custom-house, it 
was charged with an enormous entrance duty, 
which would have been remitted if the articles 
had ever been used. It was supposed that if 
the owner had not been the leader of the unpop- 
ular abolitionists, this heavy impost would not 
have been laid on a friendly British tribute to 
an eminent American. 

Page 111. There jokes our Edmund. 

Edmund Quincy. [See page 383.] 

Page 112. Let Austin's total shipwreck say. 

On the occasion of the murder of Rev. Elijah 
P. Lovejoy, editor of an anti-slavery newspaper 
at Alton, Illinois, an indignation meeting was 
held in Boston, at which Mr. Austin, Attorney- 
General of Massachusetts, made a violent pro- 
slavery speech, which called forth a crushing 
reply from Wendell Phillips, who thenceforth 
became a main pillar of abolitionism. 

Page 112. Smiles the reviled and pelted 
Stephen. 

Stephen S. Foster. 

Page 112. Sits Abby in her modest dress. 

Abby Kelley. 

Page 131. _ There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, 
and as dignified. 

[I am quite sensible now that I did not do 
Mr. Bryant justice in the " Fable." But there 
was no personal feeling in what I said — though 
I have regretted what I did say because it 
might seem personal. I am now asked to write 
a review of his poems for the North American. 
If I do, I shall try to do him justice. Letters 
I. 221.] 



Page 137. But there comes Miranda, Zeus ! 
here shall I, flee to ? 

[If it be not too late, strike out these four 
verses in " Miranda : " 
There is one thing she owns in her own private right, 
It is native and genuine — namely, her spite ; 
When she acts as a censor, she privately blows 
A censer of vanity, 'neath her own nose. 

Lowell to C. F. Briggs, October 4, 1848.] 

THE BIGLOW PAPERS 

I am indebted to Mr. Frank Beverly Wil- 
liams for these illustrative notes. 

FIRST SERIES 

This series of the Biglow Papers relates to 
the Mexican War. It expresses the sentiment 
of New England, and particularly of Massachu- 
setts, on that conflict, which in its aim and 
conduct had little of honor for the American 
Republic. The war was begun and prosecuted 
in the interest of Southern slaveholders. It 
was essential to the vitality of slavery that 
fresh fields should constantly be opened to it. 
Agriculture was almost the sole industry in 
which slaves could be profitably employed. 
That their labor should be wasteful and care- 
less to preserve the productive powers of the 
soil was inevitable. New land was ever in 
demand, and the history of slavery in the 
United States is one long series of struggles for 
more territory. It was with this end in view 
that a colony of roving, adventurous Americans, 
settled in the thinly populated and poorly gov- 
erned region now known as Texas, revolted 
from the Mexican government and secured 
admission to the Union, thus bringing on the 
war with Mexico. The Northern Whigs had 
protested against annexation, but after the war 
began their resistance grew more and more 
feeble. In the vain effort to retain their large 
Southern constituent, they sacrificed justice to 
expediency and avoided an issue that would not 
be put down. The story of the Mexican War is 
the story of the gradual decline of the great 
Whig party, and of the growth of that organi- 
zation, successively known as the Liberty, Free- 
Soil, and Republican party, whose policy was 
the exclusion of slavery from all new territory. 
One more victory was granted to the Whigs in 
1848. After that their strength failed rapidly. 
Northern sentiment was being roused to a sense 
of righteous indignation by Southern aggres- 
sions and the fervid exhortations of Garrison 
and his co-workers in the anti-slavery cause. 
Few, however, followed Garrison into disloyalty 
to the Constitution. The greater number pre- 
ferred to stay in the Union and use such lawful 
political means as were available for the re- 
striction of slavery. Their wisdom was de- 
monstrated by the election of Abraham Lincoln 
twelve years after the Mexican War closed. 

Page 181. A cruetin Sarjunt. 

The act of May 13, 1846, authorized President 
Polk to employ the militia, and call out 50,000 
volunteers, if necessary. He immediately called 



472 



APPENDIX 



for the full number of volunteers, asking Massa- 
chusetts for 777 men. On May 26 Governor 
Briggs issued a proclamation for the enrol- 
ment of the regiment. As the President's call 
was merely a request and not an order, many 
Whigs and the Abolitionists were for refusing 
it. The Liberator for June 5 severely censured 
the governor for complying, and accused him of 
not carrying out the resolutions of the last Whig 
Convention, which had pledged the party " to 
present as firm a front of opposition to the 
institution as was consistent with their alle- 
giance to the Constitution." 

Page 182. Massachusetts . . . she 's akneelin' 
with the rest. 

An allusion to the governor's call for troops 
(cf . note to p. 181) as well as to the vote on the 
War Bill. On May 11, 1846, the President sent 
to the House of Representatives his well-known 
message declaring the existence of war brought 
on "by the act of Mexico," and asking for a 
supply of $10,000,000. Of the seven members 
from Massachusetts, all Whigs, two, Robert 
C. Winthrop, of Boston, and Amos Abbott, 
of Andover, voted for the bill. The Whigs 
throughout the country, remembering the fate 
of the party which had opposed the last war 
with England, sanctioned the measure as neces- 
sary for the preservation of the army, then in 
peril by the unauthorized acts of the President. 

Page 182. 

Hadn't they sold your colored seamen ? 
Hadn't they made your envoys wHz ? 

South Carolina, Louisiana, and several other 
Southern States at an early date passed acts 
to prevent free persons of color from entering 
their jurisdictions. These acts bore with par- 
ticular severity upon colored seamen, who were 
imprisoned, fined, or whipped, and often sold 
into slavery. On the petition of the Massa- 
chusetts Legislature, Governor Briggs, in 1844, 
appointed Mr. Samuel Hoar agent to Charles- 
ton, and Mr. George Hubbard to New Orleans, 
to act on behalf of oppressed colored citizens of 
the Bay State. Mr. Hoar was expelled from 
South Carolina by order of the Legislature of 
that State, and Mr. Hubbard was forced by 
threats of violence to leave Louisiana. The 
obnoxious acts remained in force until after the 
Civil War. 

Page 183. Go to work arC part. 

Propositions to secede were not uncommon in 
New England at this time. The rights of the 
States had been strongly asserted on the acqui- 
sition of Louisiana in 1803, and on the admis- 
sion of the State of that name in 1812. Among 
the resolutions of the Massachusetts Legislature 
adopted in 1845, relative to the proposed annex- 
ation of Texas, was one declaring that " such 
an act of admission would have no binding 
force whatever on the people of Massachusetts." 

John Quincy Adams, in a discourse before 
the New York Historical Society, in 1839, 
claimed a right for the States "to part in 
friendship with each other . . . when the fra- 
ternal spirit shall give way," etc. The Garri- 
sonian wing of the Abolitionists notoriously 



advocated secession. There were several other \ 
instances of an expression of this sentiment, but 
for the most part they were not evoked by 
opposition to slavery. 

Page 184. Hoorawin? in ole Funnel. 

The Massachusetts regiment, though called 
for May 13, 1846, was not mustered into the 
United States' service till late in January of 
the next year. The officers, elected January 5, 
1847, were as follows : Caleb Cushing, of New- 
buryport, Colonel; Isaac H. Wright, of Rox- 
bury, Lieutenant-Colonel ; Edward W. Abbott, 
of Andover, Major. Shortly before the troops 
embarked for the South, on the evening of 
Saturday, January 23, 1847, a public meeting 
was held in Faneuil Hall, where an elegant 
sword was presented to Mr. Wright by John 
A. Bolles, on behalf of the subscribers. Mr. 
Bolles' speech on this occasion is the one re- 
ferred to. 

Page 184. Mister Bolles. 

Mr. John Augustus Bolles was the author of 
a prize essay on a Congress of Nations, pub- 
lished by the American Peace Society, an essay 
on Usury and Usury Laws, and of various 
articles in the North American Review and 
other periodicals. He was also the first editor 
of the Boston Journal. In 1843 he was Secre- 
tary of State for Massachusetts. 

Page 185. Rantoul. 

Mr. Robert Rantoul (1805-1852), a prominent 
lawyer and a most accomplished gentleman, 
was at this time United States District Attor- 
ney for Massachusetts. In 1851 he succeeded 
Webster in the Senate, but remained there a 
short time only. He was a Representative in 
Congress from 1851 till his death. Although a 
Democrat, Mr. Rantoul was strongly opposed 
to slavery. 

Page 185. Achokiri* on ''em. 

Mr. Rantoul was an earnest advocate of the 
abolition of capital punishment. Public atten- 
tion had recently been called to his views by 
some letters to Governor Briggs on the subject, 
written in February, 1846. 

Page 186. Caleb. 

Caleb Cushing, of Newburyport, Colonel of 
the Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers. 

Page 188. Guvener B. 

George Nixon Briggs was the Whig Governor 
of Massachusetts from 1844 to 1851. The cam- 
paign referred to here is that of 1847. Gover- 
nor Briggs was renominated by acclamation 
and supported by his party with great enthu- 
siasm. His opponent was Caleb Cushing, then 
in Mexico, and raised by President Polk to the 
rank of Brigadier-General. Cushing was de- 
feated by a majority of 14,060. 

Page 188. John P. Robinson. 

John Paul Robinson (1799-1864) was a resi- 
dent of Lowell, a lawyer of considerable ability, 
and a thorough classical scholar. He repre- 
sented Lowell in the State Legislature in 1829, 
1830, 1831, 1833, and 1842, and was Senator 
from Middlesex in 1836. ^ Late in the guber- 
natorial contest of 1847 it was rumored that 
Robinson, heretofore a zealous Whig, and a 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



473 



delegate to the recent Springfield Convention, 
had gone over to the Democratic or, as it was 
then styled, the " Loco " camp. The editor of 
the Boston Palladium wrote to him to learn the 
truth, and Robinson replied in an open letter 
avowing his intention to vote for Cushing. 

Page 188. Gineral C. 

General Caleb Cushing. 

Page 189. " Our country, however bounded." 

Mr. R. C. Winthrop, M. C, in a speech at 
Faneuil Hall, July 4, 1845, said in deprecation 
of secession : " Our country — bounded by the 
St. John's and the Sabine, or however otherwise 
bounded or described, and be the measure- 
ments more or less — still our country — to be 
cherished in all our hearts, to be defended by all 
our hands." The sentiment was at once taken 
up and used effectively by the " Cotton " Whigs, 
those who inclined to favor the Mexican War. 

Page 190. The Liberator. 

The Liberator was William Lloyd Garrison's 
anti-slavery paper, published from 1831 to 1865. 
The "heresies" of which Mr. Wilbur speaks 
were Garrison's advocacy of secession, his well- 
known and eccentric views on "no govern- 
ment," woman suffrage, etc. 

Page 191. Scott. 

General W. Scott was mentioned as a possible 
Whig candidate for the Presidency in the sum- 
mer of 1847, but was soon overshadowed by 
General Taylor. 

Page 192. Palfrey. 

December 6, 1847, Mr. R. C.^ Winthrop, of 
Boston, the Whig candidate for Speaker of the 
House in the Thirtieth Congress, was elected 
after three ballots. Mr. John Gorham Palfrey, 
elected a Whig member from Boston, and Mr. 
Joshua Giddings, of Ohio, refused to vote for 
Winthrop, and remained firm to the last in 
spite of the intensity of public opinion in their 
party. The election of a Whig Speaker in a 
manner depended on their votes. Had they 
supported Winthrop, he could have been elected 
on the second ballot. At the third he could 
not have been elected without them had not 
Mr. Levin, a Native American member, 
changed his vote, and Mr. Holmes, a Democrat 
from South Carolina, left the hall. Mr. Palfrey 
refused to vote for Mr. Winthrop because he 
was assured the latter would not, though his 
power over the committees, exert his influence 
to arrest the war and obstruct the extension of 
slavery into new territory. So bold and decided 
a stand at so critical a time excited great in- 
dignation for a time among the " Cotton " 
Whigs of Boston. 

Page 193. Springfield Convention. 

This convention was held September 29, 1847. 
The substance of the resolutions is given by Mr. 
Biglow. 

Page 195. Monteery. 

Monterey, the capital of Nueva Leon, capit- 
ulated September 24, 1846, thus giving the 
United States' troops control over about two 
thirds of the territory and one tenth of the 
population of Mexico. 

Page 196. Cherry Buster. 



August 20, 1847, General Scott stormed the 
heights of Cherubusco, and completely routed 
the 30,000 Mexicans stationed there under Santa 
Anna. Scott could have entered the capital at 
once in triumph had he not preferred to delay 
for peace negotiations. 

Page 196. The Tooleries. 

The French Revolution of 1848, which re- 
sulted in the deposition of Louis Philippe, was 
at this time impending. 

Page 196. The Post. 

The Boston Post, a Democratic, or Loco 
newspaper. 

Page 196. The Courier. 

The Boston Courier, in which the Biglow 
Papers first appeared, was a "Conscience" 
Whig paper. 

Page 197. Drayton and Sayres. 

In April, 1848, an attempt was made to 
abduct seventy-seven slaves from Washington 
in the schooner Pearl, under the conduct of 
Captain Drayton and Sayres, or Sayers, his 
mate. The slaves were speedily recaptured 
and sold South, while their brave defenders 
barely escaped with their lives from an in- 
furiated mob. The Abolitionists in Congress 
determined to evoke from that body some ex- 
pression of sentiment on the subject. On the 
20th of April Senator Hale introduced a reso- 
lution implying but not expressing sympathy 
with the oppressed. It stirred the slavehold- 
ers to unusual intemperance of language. Cal- 
houn was " amazed that even the Senator from 
New Hampshire had so little regard for the 
Constitution," and, forgetting his usual dig- 
nity, declared he " would as soon argue with a 
maniac from Bedlam " as with Mr. Hale. Mr. 
Foote, of Mississippi, was, perhaps, the most 
violent of all. He denounced any attempt of 
Congress to legislate on the subject of slavery 
as "a nefarious attempt to commit grand lar- 
ceny." He charged Mr. Hale with being "as 
guilty as if he had committed highway rob- 
bery," and went on to say, "I invite him to 
visit Mississippi, and will tell him beforehand, 
in all honesty, that he could not go ten miles 
into the interior before he would grace one 
of the tallest trees of the forest with a rope 
around his neck, with the approbation of all 
honest and patriotic citizens ; and that, if 
necessary, I should myself assist in the opera- 
tion." 

Mr. Hale stood almost alone with his reso- 
lution, which was soon arrested by an adjourn- 
ment. A similar resolution failed in the House. 

Drayton and Sayres were convicted by the 
District Court and sentenced to long terms of 
imprisonment. In 1852 Senator Sumner secured 
for them an unconditional pardon from Presi- 
dent Fillmore. 

Page 198. .Mr. Foote. 

Cf. note above. Mr. Henry S. Foote was 
Senator from Mississippi from 1847 to 1852. He 
was a member of the Confederate Congress, 
and the author of The War of the Rebellion, and 
Personal Recollections of Public Men. 

Page 198. "" 



474 



APPENDIX 



W. P. Mangum (1792-1861) was Senator from 
North Carolina from 1831 to 1837, and from 
1841 to 1847. He was President pro tern, of 
the Senate during Tyler's administration, 1842- 
1845. 

Page 198. Cass. 

Lewis Cass (1782-1866) was Jackson's Secre- 
tary of War from 1831 to 1836, Minister to 
France from 1836 to 1842, Senator from Michi- 
gan from 1845 to 1848, and candidate for the 
Presidency on the Democratic ticket in 1848. 
After his defeat by Taylor he was in 1849 re- 
turned to the Senate to fill out his unexpired 
term. He was Buchanan's Secretary of State 
until the famous message of December, 1860, 
when he resigned. 

Page 198. Davis. 

Jefferson Davis, the President of the so- 
called Confederate States, was a Senator from 
Mississippi from 1847 to 1850. 

Page 199. Hannegan. 

Edward A. Hannegan was Senator from In- 
diana from 1843 to 1849. He was afterwards 
Minister to Prussia and died in 1859. 

Page 199. Jarnagin. 

Spencer Jarnagin represented the State of 
Tennessee in the Senate from 1841 to 1847. He 
died in 1851. 

Page 199. Atherton. 

Charles G. Atherton (1804-1853) was Senator 
from New Hampshire from 1843 to 1849. 

Page 199. Colquitt. 

W. T. Colquitt (1799-1855) was Senator from 
Georgia, from 1843 to 1849. 

Page 199. Johnson. 

Reverdy Johnson was Senator from Mary- 
land, 1845-1849. 

Page 199. Westcott. 

James D. Westcott, Senator from Florida, 
1845-1849. 

Page 199. Lewis. 

Dixon H. Lewis represented Alabama in the 
House of Representatives from*1829 to 1843, and 
in the Senate from 1844 till his death in 1848. 

Page 201. " Payris." 

The revolution in France was hailed with de- 
light in the United States as a triumph of free- 
dom and popular government. In Congress 
the event gave opportunity for much sounding 
declamation, in which the Southern members 
participated with as much enthusiasm as those 
from the North. At the same time when the 
Abolitionists sought to turn all this philosophy 
to some more practical application nearer home, 
the attempt was bitterly denounced at Wash- 
ington and by the Democratic press generally. 
A striking instance of this inconsistency is af- 
forded by a speech of Senator Foote. "The 
age of tyrants and slavery," said he, in allusion 
to France, " is drawing to a close. The happy 
period to be signalized by the universal emanci- 
pation of man from the fetters of civil oppres- 
sion, and the recognition in all countries of the 
great principles of popular sovereignty, equal- 
ity, and brotherhood, is at this moment visibly 
commencing." A few days later, when Mr. 
Mann, the attorney for Drayton and Sayres, 



quoted these very words in palliation of his 
clients' offence, he was peremptorily cheeked 
by the judge for uttering " inflammatory " 
words that might "endanger our institutions." 

Page 203. Candidate for the Presidency. 

In the campaign of ^848 the Whigs deter- 
mined to have substantially no platform or pro- 
gramme at all, in order to retain the Southern 
element in their party. Accordingly a colorless 
candidate was selected in the person of General 
Zaehary Taylor, who, it was said, had never 
voted or made any political confession of faith. 
He was nominated as the " people's candidate," 
and men of all parties were invited to support 
him. He refused to pledge himself to any 
policy or enter into any details, unless on some 
such obsolete issue as that of a National Bank. 
After it became apparent that his followers 
were chiefly Whigs, he declared himself a Whig 
also, "although not an ultra one." He par- 
ticularly avoided compromising himself on the 
slavery question. When, in the beginning of 
1847, Mr. J. W. Taylor, of the Cincinnati Sig- 
nal, questioned him on the Wilmot Proviso, he 
answered in such vague phrases that the con- 
fused editor interpreted them first as favoring 
and finally as opposing the measure. This 
declaration, together with the candidate's an- 
nouncement that he was a Whig, was taken in 
the North to mean that he was opposed to the 
extension of slavery. The fact that he was a 
Southerner and a slaveholder was sufficient to 
reassure the South. 

Page 203. Pinto. 

Pseudonym of Mr. Charles F. Briggs (1810- 
1877), the same who was afterwards associated 
with Edgar A. Poe on the Broadway Review. 

Page 204. Thet darned Proviso. 

August 8, 1846, the President addressed a 
message to both Houses asking for $2,000,000 
to conclude a peace with Mexico and recom- 
pense her for her proposed cession of territory. 
On the same day McKay, of North Carolina, 
introduced a bill into the lower House for this 
purpose. David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, a 
Democrat and a zealous friend of annexation, 
moved as a proviso that slavery should forever 
be excluded from the new territory. The mo- 
tion was suddenly and unexpectedly carried by 
a vote of 83 to 54. It did not come to a vote 
in the Senate, for John Davis, of Massachu- 
setts, talked it to death by a long speech in its 
favor. Nevertheless it became at once a burn- 
ing question in both North and South. The 
more pronounced antislavery men of the former 
section tried to make it the political test in the 
coming campaign. The refusal of the Whig 
party to take up the question caused large ac- 
cessions to the old Liberty party, now known 
as the Free-Soil, and later to become the Re- 
publican party. 

Page 212. Ashland, etc. 

It hardly need be said that Ashland was the 
home of Henry Clay; North Bend, of Harri- 
son ; Marshfield, of Webster ; Kinderhook, of 
Van Buren ; and Baton Rouge, of General 
Taylor. 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



475 



Page 213. Pheladelphy nomernee. 

The Philadelphia nominee was General Zaeh- 
ary Taylor. 

Page 214. Maskfiel' 1 speech. 

The speech here referred to is the one deliv- 
ered hy Webster at L^arshfield, Septemher 1, 
1848. While he affirmed that the nomination 
of Taylor was " not fit to he made," he never- 
theless declared that he would vote for him, 
and advised his friends to do the same. " The 
sagacious, wise, and far-seeing doctrine of avail- 
ahility," said he, " lay at the root of the whole 
matter." 

Page 214. Choate. 

Into none of his political addresses did Ruf us 
Choate throw so much of his heart and soul 
as into those which upheld the failing policy of 
the Whig party from 1848 to 1852. 

Page 215. Buffalo. 

On August 9, 1848, the convention containing 
the consolidated elements of constitutional op- 
position to the extension of slavery met at Buf- 
falo. The party, calling itself the Free-Soil 
party now, declared its platform to be "no 
more slave States and no more slave territory." 
Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams 
were the candidates selected. Van Buren was 
chosen because it was thought he might attract 
Democratic votes. His opposition to the ex- 
tension of slavery was not very energetic. In 
his letter accepting the nomination he com- 
mended the convention for having taken no 
decisive stand against slavery in the District of 
Columbia. 

Page 216. To act agin the law. 

The slaveholding States early legislated to 
forbid education and free religious meetings to 
slaves and free people of color. Stroud's Sketch 
of the Slave Laws (Philadelphia, 1827) shows 
that the principal acts of this character date 
from the period between 1740 and 1770. This 
was long before the oldest anti-slavery societies 
were organized. Thus these laws cannot be 
represented as having been the result of imper- 
tinent and intemperate agitation on the part of 
Northern Abolitionists. They were frequently- 
defended on this ground in the heat of the anti- 
slavery conflict. 

SECOND SERIES 

Page 226. The Cotton Loan. 

In 1861 a magnificent scheme was devised for 
bolstering up the Confederate government's 
credit. The planters signed agreements sub- 
scribing a certain portion of the next cotton and 
tobacco crop to the government. Using this as 
a basis for credit, the government issued bonds 
and placed about $15,000,000 in Europe, chiefly 
in England. A much greater loan might have 
been negotiated had it not suddenly appeared 
that the agreements made by the planters were 
almost worthless. By the end of the year the 
plan was quietly and completely abandoned. 
The English bondholders had the audacity to 
apply for aid to the United States after the 



Page 226. MenVnger. 

Charles Gustavus Memminger, although he 
had opposed nullification, was one of the lead- 
ers in the secession movement which began in 
his own State, South Carolina. On the form- 
ation of the Confederate government he was 
made Secretary of the Treasury. Although not 
without experience in the management of his 
State's finances he showed little skill in his 
new position. 

Page 226. Cornfiscatin' all debts. 

After the failure of the Produce Loan and 
one or two other measures on a similarly grand 
scale, the Confederate government resorted to 
simpler means. Chief among these were the 
acts confiscating the property of and all debts 
due to alien enemies. No great number of rep- 
utable persons in the South could resolve to 
compound or wipe out debts involving their 
personal honor, so the results of the scheme 
were meagre. 

Page 228. Mason and Sudeli*. 

In the latter part of 1861 President Davis 
undertook to send agents or commissioners to 
England and France to represent the Southern 
cause. The men chosen were James M. Mason, 
of Virginia, and John Slidell, of Louisiana. On 
the 12th of October they left Charleston, eluded 
the blockading squadron, and landed at Havana. 
Thence they embarked for St. Thomas on the 
British mail-steamer Trent. On the way the 
Trent was stopped by Captain Wilkes, of 
the American man-of-war San Jacinto, and the 
Confederate agents were transferred as prisoners 
to the latter vessel. The British Government 
at once proclaimed the act "a great outrage," 
and sent a peremptory demand for the release 
of the prisoners and reparation. At the same 
time, without waiting for any explanation, it 
made extensive preparations for hostilities. It 
seemed and undoubtedly was expedient for the 
United States to receive Lord Russell's demand 
as an admission that impressment of British 
seamen found on board neutral vessels was 
unwarrantable. Acting on the demand as an 
admission of the principle so long contended for 
by the United States, Mr. Seward disavowed 
the act of Wilkes and released the commis- 
sioners. But it was held then and has since 
been stoutly maintained by many jurists that 
the true principles of international law will not 
justify a neutral vessel in transporting the 
agents of a belligerent on a hostile mission. On 
the analogy of despatches they should be con- 
traband. The difficulty of amicable settlement 
at that time, however, lay not so much in the 
point of law as in the intensity of popular feel- 
ing on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Page 231. Belligerent rights. 

One month after Sumter was attacked, on 
May 13, 1861, the Queen issued a proclamation 
of neutrality, according belligerent rights to the 
Confederacy. This was done even before Mr. 
Adams, the "iew minister from the Lincoln 
administration, could reach England. Com- 
mercial interest cannot excuse so precipitate a 
recognition. It cannot be regarded as anything 



476 



APPENDIX 



but a deliberate expression of unfriendliness 
towards the United States. It coldly contem- 
plated the dissolution of the Union, favored 
the establishment of an independent slave-em- 
pire, and by its moral support strengthened 
the hands of the Rebellion and prolonged the 
war. 

Page 231. Confederate privateers. 

It is notorious that Confederate cruisers were 
built, equipped, and even partially manned 
in England in open disregard of the inter- 
national law respecting neutrals. Mr. Adams 
protested constantly and emphatically against 
this, but in vain for the time. No notice was 
taken officially of the matter until it was forced 
on the British government in 1864. The sub- 
sequent negotiations concerning the Alabama 
claims, the Treaty of Washington in 1871, and 
the Geneva award to the United States of some 
fifteen million dollars, are too well known to 
require any mention. 

Page 231. The Caroline. 

In 1837 an insurrection broke out in Canada, 
and armed bodies of men styling themselves 
"patriots" were in open rebellion against the 
government. In spite of the President's mes- 
sage exhorting citizens of the United States not 
to interfere, and in defiance of the troops sent 
to Buffalo to carry out his orders, numbers of 
sympathizers from New York crossed the Ni- 
agara River and gave assistance to the insur- 
gents. The British authorities would have been 
warranted in seizing the American vessel Caro- 
line, which was used to transport citizens to 
the Canadian shore, had the seizure been made 
in flagrante delicto, or out of our territorial 
waters. But in crossing to the American side 
of the river and taking the offending vessel 
from her moorings these authorities commit- 
ted a grave breach of neutrality. After five 
years of negotiation the English government 
finally apologized and made reparation for the 
injury. 

Page 233. Seward sticks a three-months' pin. 

Mr. W. H. Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of 
State, was at the outbreak of the Rebellion an 
earnest advocate of conciliation. He seemed 
to think that if war could be averted for a time, 
until the people of the seceding States perceived 
the true intention of the administration to be 
the preservation of the Union, not the promot- 
ing of Abolitionism, the Southern movement 
would fail. In this belief he frequently de- 
clared that the trouble would all be over in 
sixty days. 

Page 237. Bull Bun. 

On the 21st of July, 1861, the Union troops 
under General McDowell were completely 
routed by Beauregard at Bull Run in Virginia. 
The North was finally convinced that the South 
was equipped for and determined on a desper- 
ate struggle, while the victory gave immense 
encouragement to the insurgents. 

Page 243. # Ones'mus. 

The "Scriptural" view, according to the 
mind of Mr. Sawin, would have been that of 
Jeremiah S. Black, who saw in the case of 



Onesimus St. Paul's express approval of the Fu- 
gitive Slave Law of 1850. 

Page 244. Debow. 

De Bow's Commercial Beview, published in 
New Orleans, Louisiana, was for some years 
before the war very bitter against the North, 
its institutions, and its society in general. 

Page 244. Simms an 1 Maury. 

William Gilmore Simms, the South Carolina 
novelist and poet, is here referred to. Matthew 
Fontaine Maury, of Virginia, naval officer and 
hydrographer, was a man of some scientific at- 
tainments. BEe was the author of several works 
on the physical geography of the sea, naviga- 
tion, and astronomy. Both men were born in 
the same year, 1806. 

Page 245. Arms an' cannon. 

John B. Floyd, while Secretary of War in 
Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet, was detected in the 
act of stripping Northern arsenals of arms and 
ammunition to supply the South. He began 
this work as early as December, 1859, and it is 
not known to what extent he carried it. Pol- 
lard, a Southern historian, says the South en- 
tered the war with 150,000 small-arms of the 
most approved modern pattern, all of which it 
owed to the government at Washington. Floyd 
resigned because some forts and posts in the 
South were not given up to the rebels. 

Page 245. Admittin' we wuz naflly right. 

President Buchanan's message of the first 
Monday of December, 1860, declared " the 
long - continued and intemperate interference 
of the Northern people with the question of 
slavery in the Southern States " had at last 
produced its natural effect ; disunion was im- 
pending, and if those States could not obtain 
redress by constitutional means, secession was 
justifiable and the general government had no 
power to prevent it. The effect these utter- 
ances had in spreading and intensifying the 
spirit of secession is incalculable. 

Page 246. On the jump to interfere. 

During the larger part of the war great ap- 
prehension of attempts on the part of foreign 
powers to interfere prevailed in the Northern 
States. With the exception of Russia and Den- 
mark, all Europe inclined toward the South. 
Our form of government was not favored by 
them, and they were not unwilling to see its 
failure demonstrated by a complete disruption. 
For a long time it was very generally believed 
that the South would be victorious in the end. 
Had the Confederacy at any time had a bright 
prospect of success, it is likely that England 
or France might have offered to interfere. In- 
deed, the success of the French scheme to set 
up a military empire in Mexico in defiance of 
the Monroe doctrine entirely depended on the 
contingency of a victory for secession. Napo- 
leon therefore was urgent for mediation. The 
subject was suggested several times by the 
French foreign minister in his correspondence 
with Mr. Seward, and was pressed on the 
British Government by France. 

Page 249. The Border States. 

The Border States, by contiguity tc the North 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



477 



and natural unfitness for a very profitable 
system of slave-labor, were slow to take a defi- 
nite stand. President Lincoln's policy was to 
proceed cautiously at first, keep the slavery 
question in the background, and enlist the sym- 
pathies of these States by appeals to their at- 
tachment to the Union. Although the people 
of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri 
were pretty evenly divided, the State govern- 
ments were kept from seceding. Without the 
support of the Republican Congressmen from 
this section, Lincoln could not have carried out 
his abolition policy. 

Page 249. Hampton Roads. 

The battle of Hampton Roads, at the en- 
trance of Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, is re- 
markable for the revolution in naval warfare 
which it began. The utter worthlessness of 
wooden against armored vessels was suddenly 
and convincingly demonstrated. On the 8th 
of March, 1862, the Confederate armored ram 
Virginia, formerly Merrimac, made terrible 
havoc among the old wooden men-of-war sta- 
tioned about Fortress Monroe. But at nine 
o'clock that night the little Monitor steamed 
into the Roads to the assistance of the shat- 
tered Federal navy. The next day's battle js 
one of the romances of war. Had Mr. Wil- 
bur waited for the next Southern mail before 
writing this letter, the Devil might have had 
less credit given him. 

Page 251. From, the banks o' my own Massis- 

SllOXtt. 

In the period from 1830 to 1840, the sud- 
den and healthy increase of immigration and 
the flattering industrial prospect induced many 
Western and Southern States to make lavish, 
expenditures for internal improvements. Their 
credit was good and they borrowed too largely. 
After the financial crisis of 1837, insolvency 
■stared them in the face. A number repudiated, 
among whom Mississippi in particular was 
heavily indebted. Her securities were largely 
held in England. It added nothing to the 
credit of the Confederacy that Jefferson Da- 
vis had been an earnest advocate of repudia- 
tion. 

Page 252. Roanoke, Bufort, Millspring. 

The loss of Roanoke Island, on the coast of 
North Carolina, February 8, 1862, was a severe 
one to the South. The finest harbor on the 
Southern coast was that of Port Royal, South 
Carolina, in the centre of the sea-island cotton 
district. This point the North fixed on as the 
best for a base of operations, and on October 
29, 1861, a fleet of fifty vessels, including thirty- 
three transports, was sent against it. A fierce 
attack was begun on November 7, and on the 
next day the two forts, Walker and Beauregard, 
capitulated. Without encountering further op- 
position the Federal troops took possession of 
the town of Beaufort, on an island in the har- 
bor. January 19, 1862, the Confederates under 
Crittenden were defeated with considerable loss 
at Millspring, Kentucky, by General G. H. 
Thomas. 

Page 252. Reecognition. 



Recognition of independence by the Euro- 
pean powers, particularly France and England, 
would of course have been of the greatest value 
to the South. It is said that Mr. Roebuck's 
motion in the House of Commons to recognize 
the Confederate States would have passed but 
for the timely news of Gettysburg. Certainly 
if it had, France would not have been slow to 
follow. It is difficult to overestimate the dis- 
astrous effect such events would have had on 
the Northern cause. 

Page 253. Your Belmonts, Vallandighams, 
Woodses. 

Mr. August Belmont, of New York, Chair- 
man of the Democratic National Committee 
from 1860 to 1872, although opposed to seces- 
sion, still attributed the cause and the responsi- 
bility for the continuance of the war to the 
Republican Administration. He led his party 
in clamoring for peace and conciliation, espe- 
cially in 1864, and bitterly opposed reconstruc- 
tion. Clement L. Vallandignam, of Dayton, 
Ohio, was the most conspicuous and noisy one 
of the Peace Democrats during the war. His 
treasonable and seditious utterances finally led 
to his banishment to the South in May, 1863. 
Thence he repaired to Canada, where he re- 
mained while his party made him their candi- 
date in the next gubernatorial campaign, in 
which he was ignominiously defeated. The 
Woodses were the brothers Benjamin and Fer- 
nando Wood, prominent Democrats of New York 
city. The former was editor of the Daily News 
and a Representative in Congress. The latter 
was several times Mayor of New York, and 
for twelve years a Representative in Congress. 

Page 253. Clumbus. 

After the fall of Fort Donelson, Columbus, 
Kentucky, was no longer tenable, and Beau- 
regard ordered General Polk to evacuate it. 
March 3, 1862, a scouting party of Illinois troops, 
finding the post deserted, occupied it, and when 
Sherman approached the next day he found the 
Union flag flying over the town. 

Page 253. Donelson. 

The capture of Fort Donelson, in Tennessee, 
February 16, 1862, by General Grant, was one 
of several Union successes in the West, whose 
value was almost entirely neutralized by Me- 
Clellan's dilatory conduct of the Army of the 
Potomac. General John B. Floyd's precipitate 
retreat from the fort as the Union forces ap- 
proached was afterwards represented in one of 
his official reports as an heroic exploit. 

Page 256. Taney. 

Roger B. Taney, of Maryland, Chief Justice 
of the Supreme Court of the United States 
from 1836 to 1864. He is chiefly notable for 
the Dred Scott decision, in 1857, in which he 
held that a negro was not a "person" in the 
contemplation of the Constitution, and hence 
" had no rights a white man was bound to 
respect ; " that the Constitution recognized 
property in slaves, and that this ownership 
was as much entitled to protection in the 
Territories as any other species of property. 
According to this, all legislation by Congress 



478 



APPENDIX 



' 



on slavery, except in its aid, was unconstitu- 
tional. 

Page 257. Compromise System. 

Henry Clay was the "great compromiser." 
The aim of his life was the preservation of the 
Union even at the cost of extending slave terri- 
tory. The three compromises for which he is 
famous were the Missouri in 1820, the Tariff in 
1833, and the California or "Omnibus" Com- 
promise in 1850, the most conspicuous feature 
of which was the Fugitive Slave Law. 

Page 257. S.J. Court. 

At the beginning of Lincoln's administration, 
five of the Supreme Court Justices, an absolute 
majority, were from the South, and had always 
been State-rights Democrats. 

Page 259. The Law- ri 1 -Order Party of ole 

CJttlCZTltKZtST • 

In Cincinnati, on March 24, 1862, Wendell 
Phillips, while attempting to deliver one of his 
lectures on slavery and the war, was attacked 
by a mob and very roughly handled. 

Page 267. Gov' nor Seymour. 

Horatio Seymour (1810-1886), of Utica, New 
York, was one of the most prominent and re- 
spected men in the Democratic party, and a 
bitter opponent of Lincoln. He had at this 
time been recently elected Governor of New 
York on a platform that denounced almost 
every measure the government had found it 
necessary to adopt for the suppression of the 
Rebellion. His influence contributed not a fit- 
tie to the encouragement of that spirit which 
inspired the Draft Riot in the city of New York 
in July, 1863. 

Page 268. Pres'dunfs proclamation. 

In the autumn of 1862 Mr. Lincoln saw that 
he must either retreat or advance boldly against 
slavery. He had already proceeded far enough 
against it to rouse a dangerous hostility among 
Northern Democrats, and yet not far enough to 
injure the institution or enlist the sympathy of 
pronounced anti-slavery men. He determined 
on decisive action. On September 22, 1862, he 
issued a monitory proclamation giving notice 
that on the first day of the next year he would, 
in the exercise of his war-power, emancipate all 
slaves of those States or parts of States in re- 
bellion, unless certain conditions were complied 
with. This proclamation was at once violently 
assailed by the Democrats, led by such men as 
Seymour, and for a time the opposition threat- 
ened disaster to the administration. The elec- 
tions in the five leading free States — New 
York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois 
— went against the Republicans. But with the 
aid of New England, the West, and, not least 
of all, the Border Slave States, the President 
was assured a majority of about twenty in the 
new House to carry out his abolition policy. 

Page 269. Kettelopotomachia. 

The incident furnishing the occasion for this 
poem was a Virginia duel, or rather a free 
fight. Mr. H. R. PoUard, of the Richmond 
Examiner, had some difficulty with Messrs. 
Coleman and N. P. Tyler, of the Enquirer, 
concerning the public printing. On Friday, 



January 5, 1866, all three gentlemen met in the/ 
rotunda of the Virginia Capitol, and proceeded 
to settle their dispute by an appeal to revolvers. 
Six shots were fired, but no damage resulted., 
except to a marble statue of Washington. 

Page 270. Letcheris et Floydis magnisque. 
Extra or dine Billis. 

John Letcher (1813-1884), a Virginia lawyer 
and politician, was several times in Congress, 
and was Governor of his State from 1860 to 
1864. John B. Floyd (1805-1863) was Governor 
of Virginia from 1849 to 1852, Secretary of War 
in Buchanan's Cabinet, and a brigadier in the 
Confederate service. William Smith, of King 
George County, Virginia, was the proprietor of 
an old line of coaches running through Virginia 
and the Carolinas. He was called " Extra 
Billy " because he charged extra for every 
package, large or small, which his passengers 
carried. Mr. Smith himself, however, attrib- 
uted his nickname to his extra service to the 
State. He was several times a Congressman, 
twice Governor of Virginia, and a Confederate 
Brigadier-General. 

Page 281. Seward. 

Under the influence of Mr. Seward, Presi- 
dent Andrew Johnson developed a policy of 
reconstruction directly opposed to the views 
of Congress and the mass of the Republican 
party. He believed in punishing individuals, 
if necessary, but that all the States ought to h 
re-installed at once in the position they had 
occupied in 1860. The guarantees against dis 
loyalty he proposed to exact from the South 
were few and feeble. Congress, on the other 
hand, determined to keep the subdued States 
in a position somewhat resembling that of ter- 
ritories and under military surveillance until :.t 
could be satisfied that four years' war would 
not be without good results. Its chief aim was 
to secure the safety of the negro, who had bee) 
freed by the thirteenth Amendment in Decern 
ber, 1865. These differences of plan led to 
a protracted and bitter contest between the 
executive and legislative departments, culmi 
nating in the unsuccessful attempt to impeach 
Johnson in March, 1868. The Congressional 
policy was carried out over the President's 
vetoes. Among other conditions the Southern 
States were required to ratify the fourteenth 
and fifteenth Amendments, giving citizenship 
and suffrage to the blacks, before being quali- 
fied for readmission to the Union. 

Page 283. Mac. 

General George B. McClellan was one of th 
leaders of the Northern Democracy during thf 
war, and the presidential nominee against Lin- 
coln in 1864. 

Page 284. Johnson's speech an' veto message. 

The Civil Rights Act of March, 1866, had 
just been the occasion of an open rupture be- 
tween Congress and the President. The bill, 
conferring extensive rights on freedmen, passed 
both Houses, but was vetoed by Johnson. It 
was quickly passed again over his veto. 

Page 284. A temp'ry party can be based on H. 

Johnson's plan of reconstruction did, indeed, 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



479 



furnish the material for the next Democratic 
platform in the presidential campaign of 1868. 

Page 284. Tyler. 

John Tyler, who had been chosen Vice-Presi- 
dent in 1840, succeeded to the Presidency on 
the death of Harrison one month after the 
inauguration. He abandoned the policy of the 
party that elected him, and provoked just such 
a contest with it as Johnson did. 

Page 300. An Invitation. 
[Lowell entered this poem in his several edi- 
tions as addressed to J. F. H, initials which 
'> meant nothing to the general public, but re- 
\ called to the contemporaries of his college days 
\ a Virginian gentleman, a graduate of Harvard 
i of the class of 1840, greatly endeared by his 
| temper and gifts to his early associates and 
I especially to Lowell. Not long after his gradu- 
l ation he went to Germany to study ; he disap- 
f peared from sight, turning up at odd times in 
/ odd places. He did much various study and had 
i much varied experience. After many years he 
returned home. When the war broke out he 
joined the Confederate army as a surgeon, and 
died worn out with hard service in 1862.] 
Page 308. After the Burial. 
["To show you that I am not unable to go 
along with you in the feeling expressed in your 
letter, I will copy a few verses out of my com- 
mon-place book. 

Yes, faith is a goodly anchor 

When the skies are blue and clear ; 

At the bows it hangs right stalwart 
With a sturdy iron cheer. 

But when the ship goes to pieces, 
And the tempests are all let loose, 

It rushes plumb down to the sea-depths, 
'Mid slimy sea- weed and ooze. 

Better then one spar of memory, 

One broken plank of the past, 
For our human hearts to cling to, 

Adrift in the whirling vast. 

To the spirit the cross of the spirit, 

To the flesh its blind despair, 
Clutching fast the thin-worn locket 

With its threads of gossamer hair. 

O friend ! thou reasonest bravely, 

Thy preaching is wise and true ; 
But the earth that stops my darling's ears 

Makes mine insensate, too. 

That little shoe in the corner, 
So worn and wrinkled and brown, 

With its emptiness confutes you, 
And argues your wisdom down. 

" But enough, dear Sydney, of death and sor- 
row. They are not subjects which I think it 
profitable or wise to talk about, think about, or 
write about often. Death is a private tutor. 
We have no fellow-scholars, and must lay our 
lessons to heart alone." Lowell to Sydney 
Howard Gay, March 17, 1850.] 

Page 350. The Cathedral. 

[" Now for Buskin's criticisms. As to words, 



I am something of a purist, though I like best 
the word that best says the thing. (You know 
I have studied lingo a little.) I am fifty-one 
years old, however, and have in one sense won 
my spurs. I claim the right now and then to 
knight a plebeian word for good service in the 
field. But it will almost always turn out that 
it has after all good blood in its veins, and can 
prove its claim to be put in the saddle. Rote 
is a familiar word all along our seaboard to ex- 
press that dull and continuous burden of the 
sea heard inland before or after a great storm. 
The root of the word may be in rumpere, but 
it is more likely in rot are, from the identity of 
this sea-music with that of the rote — a kind 
of hurdy-gurdy with which the jongleurs ac- 
companied their song. It is one of those Eliz- 
abethan words which we New-Englanders have 
preserved along with so many others. It oc- 
curs in the 'Mirror for Magistrates,' 'the sea's 
rote,' which Nares, not understanding, would 
change to rore ! It is not to be found in any 
provincial glossary, but I caught it alive at 
Beverly and the Isles of Shoals. Like ' mob- 
bled queen,' 'tis ' good.' 

" Whiff Buskin calls ' an American elevation 
of English lower word.' Not a bit of it. I 
have always thought ' the whiff and wind of 
his fell sword' in 'Hamlet' rather fine than 
otherwise. Ben also has the word. Down- 
shod means shod with down. I doubted 
about this word myself — but I wanted it. As 
to misgave, the older poets used it as an ac- 
tive verb, and I have done with it as all poets do 
with language. My meaning is clear, and that 
is^ the main point. His objection to ' spume- 
sliding down the baffled decuman' I do not 
understand. I think if he will read over his 
'ridiculous Germanism' (p. 13 seq.) with the 
context he will see that he has misunderstood 
me. (By the way, ' in our life alone doth 
Nature live ' is Coleridge's, not Wordsworth's.) 
I never hesitate to say anything I have hon- 
estly felt because some one may have said it 
before, for it will always get a new color from 
the new mind, but here I was not saying the 
same thing by a great deal. Nihil in intellects 
quod non prius in sensu would be nearer — 
though not what I meant. Nature (inanimate), 
which is the image of the mind, sympathizes 
withall our moods. I would have numbered 
the lines as Buskin suggests, only it looks as if 
one valued them too much. That sort of thing 
should be posthumous. You may do it for 
me, my dear Charles, if my poems survive me. 
Two dropt stitches I must take up which I 
notice on looking over what I have written. 
Buskin surely remembers Carlyle's ' whiff of 
grape-shot. '_ That is one. The other is that 
rote may quite as well be from the Icelandic at 
hriota = to snore ; but my studies more and 
more persuade me that where there is in Eng- 
lish a Teutonic and a Bomance root meaning 
the same thing, the two are apt to melt into 
each other so as to make it hard to say from 
which our word comes." . . . Letters II., pp. 
65-67.] 



480 



APPENDIX 



Page 399. Phcebe. 

[The correspondence concerning this poem 
with the original form of the verses is here 
given in detail. 

TO K. W. GUJDEB. 

Legation of the United States, 
London, September 4, 1881. 
Dear Mr. Gilder, — Your telegram scared 
me, for, coming at an unusual hour, I thought 
it brought ill news from Washington. My re- 
lief on finding it innocent has perhaps made me 
too good-natured towards the verses I send 
you, but I have waited sixty-two years for 
them, and am willing to wait as many more 
(not here) before they are printed. Do what 
you like with them. They mean only my 
hearty good-will towards you and my hope for 
your success in your new undertaking. . . . 
Faithfully yours, J. R. Lowell. 

If I could see the proofs, very likely I could 
better it — they sober one and bring one to his 
bearings. Perhaps the metaphysical (or what- 
ever they are) stanzas — what I mean is moral- 
izing — were better away. Perhaps too many 
compound epithets — but I had to give up 
"visionary" in order to save "legendary," 
which was essential. Perhaps a note, saying 
that so long as the author can remember, a pair 
of these birds (give ornithological name — 
muscicapa ?) have built on jutting brick in an 
archway leading to the house at Elmwood — or 
does everybody know what a phcebe is ? I am 
so old that I am accustomed to people's being 
ignorant of whatever you please. 

PHCEBE 

Ere pales in heaven the morning star, 

A bird, the loneliest of its kind, 
Hears Dawn's faint footfall from afar 

While all its mates are dumb and blind. 

It is a wee sad-colored thing, 

As shy and secret as a maid, 
That, ere in choir the robins ring, 

Pipes its own name like one afraid. 

It seems pain-prompted to repeat 

The story of some ancient ill, 
But Phoebe ! Phcebe ! sadly sweet 

Is all it says, and then is still. 

It calls and listens. Earth and sky, 

Hushed by the pathos of its fate, 
Listen, breath held, but no reply 

Comes from its doom-divided mate. 

Phcebe ! it calls and calls again, 
And Ovid, could he but have heard, 

Had hung a legendary pain 
About the memory of the bird ; 

A pain articulate so long 

In penance of some mouldered crime 
Whose ghost still flies the Furies' thong 

Down the waste solitudes of Time ; 

Or waif from young Earth's wonder-hour 
When gods found mortal maidens fair, 

And will malign was joined with power 
Love's kindly laws to overbear. 



Phcebe ! is all it has to say 
In plaintive cadence o'er and o'er, 

Like children that have lost their way 
And know their names, but nothing more. 

Is it a type, since nature's lyre 

Vibrates to every note in man, 
Of that insatiable desire, 

Meant to be so, since life began ? 

Or a fledged satire, sent to rasp 
Their jaded sense, who, tired so soon 

With shifting life's doll-dresses, grasp, 
Gray-bearded babies, at the moon ? 

I, in strange lands at gray of dawn 
Wakeful, have heard that fruitless plaint 

Through Memory's chambers deep withdrawn 
Renew its iterations faint. 

So nigh ! yet from remotest years 

It seems to draw its magic, rife 
With longings unappeased and tears 

Drawn from the very source of life. 

Let who has felt compute the strain 

Of struggle with abuses strong, 
The doubtful course, the helpless pain 

Of seeing best intents go wrong. 

We, who look on with critic eyes, 
Exempt from action's crucial test, 

Human ourselves, at least are wise 
In honoring one who did his best. 

TO THE SAME. 

Legation of the United States, 
London, September 5, 1881. 
Bear Mr. Gilder, — I sent off the verses yes- 
terday, and now write in great haste to say that 
in my judgment the stanza beginning " Or waif 
from young Earth's," etc., were better away. 
Also for " doom-divided " print " doom-dis- 
severed." I have not had time to mull over 
the poem as I should like. 

Faithfully yours, J. R. Lowell, j 

P. S. I may write in a day or two suppress- i 
ing more, after I have had time to think. 

i 
to the same. 

Legation of the United States, 

London, September 6, 1881. ; 
Dear Mr. Gilder, — I bother you like a boy j 
with his first essay in verse. I wrote yester- 
day to ask the omission of a stanza — but last ) 
night, being sleepless, as old fellows like me 
are too often apt to be, I contrived to make 
a stanza which had been tongue-tied say what 
I wished. 
Let it go thus, 

Waif of the young World's wonder-hour 



. to overbear, (comma). 



Then go on — 

Like Progne, did it feel the stress 
And coil of the prevailing words 

Close round its being and compress 
Man's ampler nature to a bird's ? 



A CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF MR. LOWELL'S POEMS 481 



This manages the transition, which was want- 
ing. Perhaps this might follow : — 

One only memory left of all 
The motley crowd of vanished scenes, 

Hers — and vain impulse to recall 
By repetition what it means. 

Faithfully yours, 

J. R. Lowell. 

TO THE SAME. 

Legation of the United States, 
London, September 8, 1881. 
Dear Mr. Gilder, — This is positively the 
last ! I wish to omit the stanza beginning " Or 
a winged satire," etc. I have been convinced 
by a friend whom I have consulted that it was 
a cuckoo's egg in my nest. Item. The verse 
that bothered me most of all was this : 

Listen, breath held, but no reply, etc. 

I wished to have a distinct pause after " lis- 
ten," in accordance with the sense. Somehow 
I could not get the right, and "breath held" 
was clearly the wrong one, awkward, andwith 
the same vowel sound in both halves. Print — 

Listen : no whisper of reply 
Is heard of doom-dissevered mate. 

No ; that won't do, either, with its assonance 
of heard " and " dissevered " — so, though I 
prefer "dissevered" for sense, I will go back 
to the original word "divided," which I sup- 
pose was instinctive. 

This is positively my last dying speech and 
confession. You need fear nothing more from 
me. I fancy you ducking your head for fear of 
another rap every time the postman comes. 

I hope you will like my little poem, and tell 
me so if you don't. Kindest regards to Mrs. 
Gilder. 

Faithfully yours, 

J. R. Lowell, 

to the same. 

Legation op the United States, 
London, September 12, 1881. 
... As I am writing, I add that if you think 
(as I am half inclined) 

No whisper of reply 
Comes from its doom-dissevered mate 

better than the other reading, print it so. 
Faithfully yours, 

J. R. Lowell. 

P. S. We are sadly anxious to-day about the 
President. 

TO THE SAME. 
Hotel Danteli, Venice, October 24, 1881. 
. . . Thank you for the printed copy. Of 
course I am disgusted with it. Print somehow is 
like a staring plaster-cast compared with the 
soft and flowing outlines, the modest nudity of 
the manuscript clay. But it is a real pleasure 
to me that you like it. 



"Robins ring" is right, and whenever you 
spend a June night at Elm wood (as I hope you 
will so soon as I am safe there once more) 
you will recognize its truth. There are hun- 
dreds of 'em going at once, like the bells here 
last night (Sunday), with a perfect indecency of 
disregard for rhythm or each other. Mr. Bur- 
roughs, I hear, has been criticising my know- 
ledge of out-doors. God bless his soul ! I had 
been living in the country thirty years (I fancy 
it must be) before he was born, and if anybody 
ever lived in the open air it was I. So be 
at peace. By the way, I took Progne merely 
because she was changed into a little bird. I 
should have preferred a male, and was think- 
ing of a fellow (transformed, I think by Me- 
dea), but can't remember his name. While I 
am about it I question " wee." Is it English ? 
I had no dictionary at hand. But there is one 
atrocity — "moldered." Why do you give in 
to these absurdities ? Why abscond in to this 
petty creek from the great English main of 
orthography? 'T is not quite so bad as "I 
don't know as " for " I don't know that," but 
grazes it and is of a piece with putting one's 
knife in one's mouth.] 



V. A CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF 
MR. LOWELL'S POEMS 

In arranging this list the editor has relied 
first on the dates supplied by the author, and 
then on the dates of periodicals and books in 
which the poems otherwise undated first ap- 
peared. Whenever the first appearance of a 
poem has not been determined precisely, the 
title is printed in italic under the year when the 
volume first including it was published. 

1839. Threnodia. 
The Beggar. 
Summer Storm. 

1840. The Sirens. 
Love. 

Sonnet : To A. C. L. 

Sonnet (I would not have this perfect 

love of ours). 
Sonnet (For this true nobleness I seek 

in vain). 
Remembered Music. 
Irene\ 
Serenade. 

With a Pressed Flower. 
My Love. 

1841. To Perdita, Singing. 
The Moon. 

Ode (In the old days of awe and keen- 
eyed wonder). 

A Prayer. 

Song (Violet ! sweet violet ! ). 

Rosaline. 

Sonnet (What were I, Love, if I were 
stripped of thee). 

Sonnet : To the Spirit of Keats. 

Sonnet (Great truths are portions of the 
soul of man). 



APPENDIX 



Sonnet (I ask not for those thoughts, 


1847. The Landlord. 


that sudden leap). 


Extreme Unction. 


Sonnet: To M. W., on her. Birthday. 


Above and Below. 


Sonnet (My Love, I have no fear that 


The Growth of the Legend. 


thou shouldst die). 


Song: To M. L. 


Sonnet (I cannot think that thou shouldst 


To a Bine-Tree. 


pass away). 


The Search. 


Sonnet (There never yet was flower so 


The Captive. 


fair in vain). 


The Birch-Tree. 


Sonnet : Sub Pondere ereseit. 


Studies for Two Heads. 


Si deseendero in Infernum, ades. 


On a Bortrait of Dante by Giotto. 


1842. The Forlorn. 


The Changeling. 


Midnight. 


The Bioneer. 


The Rose : A Ballad. 


Longing. 


A Parable (Worn and footsore was the 


Hebe. 


Prophet). 


1848. The Sower. 


Song (0 moonlight deep and tender). 


Ambrose. 


Sonnet (Beloved, in the noisy city here). 


Ode to France. 


Sonnets : On Reading Wordsworth's Son- 


A Parable (Said Christ our Lord, "I 


nets in Defence of Capital Punishment. 


will go and see). 


(Six sonnets.) 


Freedom. 


Sonnet: To M. 0. S. 


Ode written for the Celebration of the 


Sonnet (Our love is not a fading earthly 


Introduction of the Cochituate Water 


flower). 


into the City of Boston. 


The Shepherd of King Admetus. 


To Lamartine. 


An Incident in a Railroad Car. 


To the Memory of Hood. 


Elegy on the Death of Dr. Channing. 


The Vision of Sir Launfal. 


1843. The Fountain. 


A Fable for Critics. 


The Fatherland. 


The Biglow Papers. First Series. [Pub- 
lished in book form.] 


Sonnet : In Absence. 


Sonnet : The Street. 


1849. Trial. 


A Legend of Brittany. 


Lines suggested by the Graves of Two 


Prometheus. 


English Soldiers on Concord Battle 


A Glance Behind the Curtain. 


Ground. 


Stanzas on Freedom. 


To 


Jj Envoi {Whether my heart hath wiser 


Bibliolatres. 


grown or not). 
Allegra. _ 


Beaver Brook. 


Kossuth. 


The Heritage. 


An Oriental Apologue. 


A Requiem. 


The First Snow-Fail. 


Sonnet : Wendell Phillips. 


The Parting of the Ways. 


Sonnet (I grieve not that ripe Knowledge 


The Lesson of the Pine (later, with two 


takes away). 


stanzas added, A Mood). 


Sonnet : To J. B. Giddings. 


A Day in June (later, revised and en- 


The Token. 


larged, Al Fresco). 


Bhozcus. 


Sonnet (I thought our love at full, but I 


A Chippewa Legend. 


did err). 


1844. Columbus. 


She came and went. 


On the Death of a Friend's Child. 


To John Gorham Balfrey. 


Hunger and Cold. 


To W. L. Garrison. 


The Present Crisis. 


1850. The Fountain of Youth. 


1845. An Incident of the Fire at Hamburg. 


Dara. 


To the Past. 


New Year's Eve, 1850. 


To the Future. 


An Invitation. 


A Contrast. 


Mahmood the Image-Breaker. 


On the Capture of Fugitive Slaves near 


The Unhappy Lot of Mr. Knott. 


Washington. 


1851. Anti-Apis. 


To the Dandelion. 


1852. A Parable _ (An ass munched thistles, 


The Ghost-Seer. 


while a nightingale). 


Eurydice. 


1854. The Singing Leaves. 


An Interview with Miles Standish. 


Without and Within. 


1846. The Falcon. 


Pictures from Appledore. 


The Oak. 


The Wind-Harp. 


Letter from Boston. 


Auf Wiedersehen. 


The Biglow Papers [Beginning of]. 

On the Death of Charles Turner Torrey. 


A Winter Evening Hymn to my Fire. 


Sonnet on an Autumn Sketch of H. G. 


An Indian-Summer Reverie. 


Wild. 



A CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF MR. LOWELL'S POEMS 483 



1857. 
1858. 

1859. 

1860. 
1861. 

1862. 

1863. 

1864. 

1865. 

1866. 

1867. 



1872. 
1873. 
1874. 



1875. 



My Portrait Gallery. 

Sonnet : The Maple. 

The Origin of Didactic Poetry. 

The Dead House. 

The Nest. 

Das Ewig-Weibliche (original title, Bea- 
trice) . 

Villa Franca. 

At the Burns Centennial. 

L'Envoi: To^ the Muse. 

Ode to Happiness. 

The Washers of the Shroud. 

The Biglow Papers. [Beginning of the] 
Second Series. 

Two Scenes from the Life of Blondel. 

In the Half -Way House. 

Memorise Positum: R. G. Shaw. 

On Board the '76. 

The Black Preacher. 

Gold Egg : A Dream-Fantasy. 

Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemo- 
ration. 

The Miner. 

To Mr. John Bartlett. 

At the Commencement Dinner, 1866. 

The Biglow Papers. Second Series. 
[Published in hook form.] 

A Familiar Epistle to a Friend. 

An Ember Picture. 

To H. W. L. 

The Nightingale in the Study. 

Fitz Adam's Story. 

The Flying Dutchman. 

Under the Willows. 

After the Burial. 

In the Twilight. 

The Foot-Path. 

A Mood (earlier, The Lesson of the 
Pine). 

To Charles Eliot Norton. 

Seaweed. 

The Finding of the Lyre. 

For an Autograph. 

Al Fresco (earlier, A Day in June). 

Masaccio. 

Godminster Chimes. 

Aladdin. 

The Nomades. 

Self-Study. 

The Voyage to V inland. 

Invita Minerva. 

Yussouf. 

The Darkened Mind. 

What Rabbi Jehosha said. 

All- Saints. 

Fancy's Casuistry. 

The Cathedral. 

Tempora Mutantur. 

Sonnet : To Fanny Alexander. 

Agassiz. 

An Epistle to George William Curtis. 

Sonnet : Jeffries Wyman. 

Ode read at the One Hundredth An- 
niversary of the Fight at Concord 
Bridge. 

Under the Old Elm. 

Prison of Cervantes. 



1876. 



1877. 



1879. 



1880. 
1881. 



1888. 



Sonnet : Scottish Border (original title, 
English Border). 

Sonnet: On being asked for an Auto- 
graph in Venice. 

Sonnet : The Dancing Bear. 

Sonnet : Joseph Winlock. 

An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1876. 

A Misconception. 

The Boss (originally entitled, Defrauding 
Nature). 

Sonnets: Bankside. 

Birthday Verses. 

Sonnet: Nightwatches. 

Sonnet : Pessimoptimism. 

Sonnet : The Brakes. 

Sonnet : Death of Queen Mercedes. 

Sonnet : With a Copy of Aucassin and 
Nicolete. 

Sonnet : E. G. de R. 

The Protest. 

The Petition. 

Sonnet: To a Lady Playing on the 
Cithern. 

Auspex. 

On Planting a Tree at Inveraray. 

Phoebe. 

Sonnets : With an Armchair. 

Agro-Dolce. 

A New Year's Greeting. 

Sun- Worship. 

Verses intended to go with a Posset Dish 
to my Dear Little Goddaughter, 1882. 

Sonnet: To Whittier. 

The Secret. 

To Holmes. 

The Optimist. 

Eleanor makes Macaroons. 

Bon Voyage. 

The Recall. 

Changed Perspective. 

On Hearing a Sonata of Beethoven's 
played in the Next Room. 

Under the October Maples. 

International Copyright. 

Fact or Fancy ? 

Paolo to Francesca. 

With a Pair of Gloves lost in a Wager. 

Postscript to An Epistle to George Wil- 
liam Curtis. 

Credidimus Jovem regnare. 

Sixty-Eighth Birthday. 

Endymion. 

Turner's Old T^m^raire. 

St. Michael the Weigher. 

Absence. 

In a Copy of Omar Khayyam. 

On Receiving a Copy of Mr. Austin Dob- 
son's " Old World. Idylls.'" 

To C. F. Bradford. 

Sonnet : To a Friend. 

Sonnet: To Miss D. T. 

Arcadia Rediviva. 

A Youthful Experiment in English 
Hexameters. ^ 

Estrangement. ™ 

Monna Lisa. 

On Burning some Old Letters. 



4 8 4 



APPENDIX 



The Broken Tryst. 




Inscriptions : 


Casa sin Alma. 




For- a Bell at Cornell University. 


A Christmas Carol. 




For a Memorial Window to Sir Walter 


Sonnet : The Eye's Treasury. 




Raleigh, set up in St. Margaret's, 
Westminster, by American Contrib- 


Sonnet : A Foreboding. 




Love's Clock. 




utors. 


Telepathy. 




Proposed for a Soldiers' and Sailors' 


Scherzo. _ 




Monument in Boston. 


" Franciscusde Verulamio sic Cogitavit." 


1889. 


How I consulted the Oracle of the Gold- 


The Pregnant Comment. 




fishes. 


The Lesson. 


1890. 


Fragments of an Unfinished Poem. 


Science and Poetry. 


1891. 


On a Bust of General Grant. 


The Discovery. 


1895. 


A Valentine. 


With a Seashell. 




An April Birthday — at Sea. 


In an Album. 




Love and Thought. 


Sayings. 




The Nobler Lover. 



\ 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



A beggar through the world am I, 5. 

A camel-driver, angry with his drudge, 432. 

A heap of bare and splintery crags, 302. 

A hundred years ! they 're quickly fled, 427. 

A legend that grew in the forest's hush, 74. 

A lily thou wast when I saw thee first, 10. 

A poet cannot strive for despotism, 23. 

A presence both by night and day, 302. 

A race of nobles may die oxit, 100. 

A stranger came one night to Yussouf 's tent, 

318. 
About the oak that framed this chair, of old, 

385. 
Alike I hate to be your debtor, 327. 
Along a river-side, I know not where, 334. 
Amid these fragments of heroic days, 404. 
An ass munched thistles, while a nightingale, 

432. 
" And how coidd you dream of meeting ? " 408. 
Another star 'neath Time's horizon dropped, 

105. 
Are we, then, wholly fallen ? Can it be, 97. 
As a twig trembles, which a bird, 89. 
As, cleansed of Tiber's and Oblivion's slime, 

387. 
As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches, 91. 
As life runs on, the road grows strange, 433. 
As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills, 404. 
As the broad ocean endlessly upheaveth, 22. 
At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay, 395. 
At length arrived, your book I take, 382. 
At twenty we fancied the blest Middle Ages, 

426. 
Ay, pale and silent maiden, 18. 

B, taught by Pope to do his good by stealth, 

432. 
Beauty on my hearth-stone blazing ! 320. 
Beloved, in the noisy city here, 22. 
Beneath the trees, 338. 
Bowing thyself in dust before a Book, 99. 

Can this be thou who, lean and pale, 87. 
Come back before the birds are flown, 400. 
" Come forth ! " my catbird calls to me, 331. 
Curtis, whose Wit, with Fancy arm in arm, 
388. 

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the 
way, 83. 

Dear M. By way of saving time, 111. 

Dear Sir, — You wish to know my notions, 204. 
Dear Sir, — Your letter come to han', 275. 
Dear Wendell, why need count the years, 381. 
Death never came so nigh to me before, 87. 
Don't believe in the Flying Dutchman ? 422. 
Down 'mid the tangled roots of things, 325. 



Ef I a song or two could make, 267. 
Entranced I saw a vision in the cloud, 370. 
Ere pales in Heaven the morning star, 399. 

Fair as a summer dream was Margaret, 28. 
Far over Elf -land poets stretch their sway, 404. 
Far through the memory shines a happy day, 

350. 
Far up on Katahdin thou towerest, 62. 
Far 'yond this narrow parapet of Time, 23. 
Fit for an Abbot of Theleme, 322. 
For this true nobleness I seek in vain, 20. 
Frank-hearted hostess of the field and wood, 

286. 
From the close-shut windows gleams no spark, 

5. 
Full oft the pathway to her door, 433. 

Giddings, far rougher names than thine have 

grown, 25. 
Go ! leave me, Priest ; my soul would be, 75. 
God ! do not let my loved one die, 15. 
God makes sech nights, all white an' still, 219. 
God sends his teachers unto every age, 46. 
Godminster ? Is it Fancy's play ? 297. 
Gold of the reddening sunset, backward thrown, 

406. 
Gone, gone from us ! and shall we see, 1. 
Great soul, thou sittest with me in my room, 20. 
Great truths are portions of the soul of man, 20. 
Guvener B. is a sensible man, 188. 

He came to Florence long ago, 296. 

He spoke of Burns : men rude and rough, 45. 

He stood upon the world's broad threshold; 

wide, 24. 
He who first stretched his nerves of subtile 

wire, 410. 
Heaven's cup held down to me I drain, 88. 
Here once my step was quickened, 309. 
Here we stan' on the Constitution, by thunder ! 

198. 
Hers all that Earth could promise or bestow, 

405. 
Hers is a spirit deep, and crystal-clear, 4. 
How strange are tbe freaks of memory ! 329. 
How struggles with the tempest's swells, 322. 
How was I worthy so divine a loss, 399. 
Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill, 99. 

I am a man of forty, sirs, a native of East 

Haddam, 158. 
I ask not for those thoughts, that sudden leap, 

21. 
I call as fly the irrevocable hours, 432. 
I cannot think that thou shouldstpass away, 21. 
I christened you in happier days, before, 383. 



4 86 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



I could not bear to see those eyes, 401. 
I did not praise thee when the crowd, 101. 
I do not come to weep above thy pall, 104. 
I don't much s'pose, hows'ever I should plen it, 

278. 
I du believe in Freedom's cause, 201. 
I go to the ridge in the forest, 310. 
I grieve not that ripe knowledge takes away, 

25. 
I had a little daughter, 89. 
I have a fancy : how shall I bring it, 411. 
I hed it on my min' las' time, when I to write 

ye started, 242. 
I know a falcon swift and peerless, 48. 
I love to start out arter night 's begun, 233. 
I need not praise the sweetness of his song, 330. 
I rise, Mr. Chairman, as both of us know, 430. 
I sat and watched the walls of night, 410. 
I sat one evening in my room, 80. 
I saw a Sower walking slow, 60. 
I saw the twinkle of white feet, 65. 
I sent you a message, my friens, t' other day, 

249. 
I spose you recollect thet I explained my gennle 

views, 212. 
I spose you wonder ware I be ; I can't tell, fer 

the soul o' me, 207. 
• I swam with undulation soft, 326. 
I thank ye, my frien's, for the warmth o' your 

greetin', 255. 
I thought our love at full, but I did err, 25. 
I treasure in secret some long, fine hair, 307. 
I, walking the familiar street, 396. 
I was with thee in Heaven : I cannot tell, 403. 
I watched a moorland torrent run, 410. 
I went to seek for Christ, 66. 
I would more natures were like thine, 10. 
I would not have this perfect love of ours, 20. 
If he be a nobler lover, take him ! 438. 
If I let fall a word of bitter mirth, 360. 
If I were the rose at your window, 433. 
In a small chamber, friendless and unseen, 103. 
In good old times, which means, you know, 438. 
In his tower sat the poet, 16. 
In life's small things be resolute and great, 432. 
In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder, 

11. 
In town I hear, scarce wakened yet, 402. 
In vain we call old notions fudge, 433. 
Into the sunshine, 11. 
It don't seem hardly right, John, 238. 
It is a mere wild rosebud, 44. 
It mounts athwart the windy hill, 333. 
It was past the hour of trysting, 78. 
It 's some consid'ble of a spell sence I hain't 

writ no letters, 223. 

Leaves fit to have been poor Juliet's cradle- 
rhyme, 387. 

Let others wonder what fair face, 437. 

Light of triumph in her eyes, 408. 

Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they 
who can, 82. 

Looms there the New Land, 313. 

Maiden, when such a soul as thine is born, 21. 
Mary, since first I knew thee, to this hour, 23. 



Men say the sullen instrument, 332. 

Men ! whose boast it is that ye, 55. 

My coachman, in the moonlight there, 297. 

My day began not till the twilight fell, 392. 

My heart, I cannot still it, 409. 

My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst die, 

21. 
My name is Water : I have sped, 96. 
My soul was like the sea, 9. 
My worthy friend, A. Gordon Knott, 149. 

Never, surely, was holier man, 77. 
New England's poet, rich in love as years, 386. 
Nine years have slipt like hour-glass sand, 300. 
No? Hez he? He haint, though? Wut? 

Voted agin him ? 192. 
Nor deemed he lived unto himself alone, 384. 
Not always unimpeded can I pray, 294. 
Not as all other women are, 6. 
Now Biorn, the son of Heriulf, had ill dayfi, 

311, 

O days endeared to every Muse, 423. 

" O Dryad feet," 407. 

O dwellers in the valley-land, 78. 

O Land of Promise ! from what Pisgah's height, 

64. 
O moonlight deep and tender, 19. 
O wandering dim on the extremest edge, 63. 
Of all the myriad moods of mind, 91. 
Oft round my hall of portraiture I gaze, 403. 
Oh, tell me less or tell me more, 402. 
Old events have modern meanings ; only that 

survives, 315. 
Old Friend, farewell ! Your kindly door again, 

384. # 
On this wild waste, where never blossom came, 

437. m 
Once git a smell o' musk into a draw, 260. 
Once hardly in a cyele blossometh, 22. 
Once on a time there was a pool, 248. 
One after one the stars have risen and set, 39. 
One feast, of holy days the crest, 319. 
One kiss from all others prevents me, 402. 
Opening one day a book of mine, 409. 
Our love is not a fading, earthly flower, 24. 
Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea, 339. 
Over his keys the musing organist, 106. 

Phcebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade, 

117. 
Praisest Law, friend ? We, too, love it much as 

they that love it best, 94. 
Propped on the marsh, a dwelling now, I see, 

174. 
Punctorum garretos eolens et cellara Quinque, 

270. 

Rabbi Jehosha used to say, 319. 

Reader ! Walk up at once (it will soon be too 
late), 114. 

Rippling through thy branches goes the sun- 
shine, 79. 

Said Christ our Lord, I will go and see, 95. 
Seat of all woes ? Though Nature's firm decree, 
405. 






INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



487 



She gave me all that woman can, 400. 

Shell, whose lips, than mine more cold, 411. 

Ship, blest to bear such freight across the blue, 
386. 

Shy soul and stalwart, man of patient will, 384. 

Silencioso por la puerta, 403. 

Sisters two, all praise to you, 61. 

Skilled to pull wires, he baffles Nature's hope, 
433. 

Sleep is Death's image, — poets tell us so, 400. 

So dreamy-soft the notes, so far away, 406. 

Some sort of heart I know is hers, 85. 

Sometimes come pauses of calm, when the rapt 
bard, holding his heart back, 398. 

Somewhere in India, upon a time, 161. 

Spirit, that rarely comest now, 323. 

Still thirteen years : 't is autumn now, 308. 

Stood the tall Archangel weighing, 436. 
>trong, simple, silent are the [steadfast] laws, 
439. 

Swiftly the politic goes : is it dark ? — he bor- 
rows a lantern, 432. 

Thank God, he saw you last in pomp of May, 

384. 
Thanks to the artist, ever on my wall, 387. 
That 's a rather bold speech, my Lord Bacon, 

409. 
The Bardling came where by a river grew, 315. 
The century numbers fourscore years, 410. 
The cordage creaks and rattles in the wind, 55. 
The dandelions and buttercups, 295. 
The electric nerve, whose instantaneous thrill, 

374. 
The fire is burning clear and blithely, 319. 
The hope of Truth grows stronger, day by day, 

22. 
The little gate was reached at last, 308. 
The love of all things springs from love of one, 

23. 
The Maple puts her corals on in May, 405. 
The misspelt scrawl, upon the wall, 430. 
The moon shines white and silent, 15. 
The New World's sons, from England's breasts 

we drew, 432. 
The next whose fortune 't was a tale to tell, 412. 
The night is dark, the stinging sleet, 14. 
The old Chief, feeling now wellnigh his end, 53. 
The path from me to you that led, 398; 
The pipe came safe, and welcome too, 383. 
The rich man's son inherits lands, 15. 
The same good blood that now refills, 96. 
The sea is lonely, the sea is dreary, 2. 
The snow had begun in the gloaming, 292. 
The tower of old Saint Nicholas soared upward 

to the skies, 59. 
The wind is roistering out of doors, 285. 
The wisest man could ask no more of Fate, 385. 
The world turns mild ; democracy, they say, 

425. 
There are who triumph in a losing cause, 102. 
There came a youth upon the earth, 44. 
There lay upon the ocean's shore, 294. 
There never yet was flower fair in vain, 21. 
Therefore think not the Past is wise alone, 23. 
These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were 

bred, 382. 



These rugged, wintry days I scarce could bear, 

24. 
They pass me by like shadows, crowds on 

crowds, 24. 
Thick-rushing, like an ocean vast, 10. 
This is the midnight of the century, — hark ! 

295. _ 
This kind o' sogerin' aint a mite like our Oc- 
tober trainin', 184. 
This little blossom from afar, 5. 
Thou look'dst on me all yesternight, 17. 
Thou wast the fairest of all man-made things, 

436. 
Though old the thought and oft exprest, 295. 
Thrash away, you '11 hev to rattle, 181. 
Through suffering and sorrow thou hast passed, 

19. 
Thy love thou sentest oft to me, 75. 
Thy voice is like a fountain, 8. 
'T is a woodland enchanted ! 316. 
To those who died for her on land and sea, 

432. 
True as the sun's own work, but more refined, 

385. 
True Love is a humble, low-born thing, 8. 
Turbid from London's noise and smoke, 400. 
'T was sung of old in hut and hall, 398. 
'T were no hard task, perchance, to win, 336. 
Two brothers once, an ill-matched pair, 176. 
Two fellers, Isrel named and Joe, 176. 

Unconscious as the sunshine, simply sweet, 385. 
Unseen Musician, thou art sure to please, 438. 
Untremulous in the river clear, 7. 

Violet ! sweet violet ! 17. 

Wait a little : do we not wait ? 324. 
Walking alone where we walked together, 402. 
We see but half the causes of our deeds, 49. 
We, too, have autumns, when our leaves, 97. 
We wagered, she for sunshine, I for rain, 433. 
Weak-winged is song, 342. 
What boot your houses and your lands ? 61. 
What countless years and wealth of brain were 

spent, 406. 
" What fairings will ye that I bring ? " 293. 
What gnarled stretch, what depth of shade, is 

his ! 76. 
What hath Love with Thought to do ? 438. 
What know we of the world immense, 433. 
What man would five coffined with brick and 

stone, 90. 
What mean these banners spread, 407. 
" What means this glory round our feet," 403. 
What Nature makes in any mood, 301. 
What visionary tints the year puts on, 69. ^-\ 
What were I, Love, if I were stripped of thee, 

20. 
What were the whole void world, if thou wert 

dead, 407. 
When a deed is done for Freedom, through the 

broad earth's aching breast, 67. 
When I was a beggarly boy, 300. 
When oaken woods with buds are pink, 397. 
When Persia's sceptre trembled in a hand, 291. 
When the down is on the chin, 408. 



4 88 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



When wise Minerva still was young, 421. 
Where is the true man's fatherland ? 14. 
" Where lies the capital, pilgrim, seat of who 

governs the Faithful? " 432. 
Whether my heart hath wiser grown or not, 25. 
Whether the idle prisoner through his grate, 48. 
While the slow clock, as they were miser's gold, 

405. 
Whither ? Albeit I follow fast, 347. 
Who cometh over the hills, 361. 
Who does his duty is a question, 387. 
Who hath not been a poet ? Who hafch not, 



Why should I seek her spell to decompose, 386. 
With what odorous woods and spices, 401. 
Woe worth the hour when it is crime, 104. 
Wondrous and awful are thy silent halls, 63. 
Words pass as wind, but where great deeds 

were done, 364. 
Worn and footsore was the Prophet, 19. 

Ye little think what toil it was to build, 406. 
Ye who, passing graves by night, 83. 
Yes, faith is a goodly anchor, 308. 

Zekle crep' up, quite unbeknown, 170. 



INDEX OF TITLES 

[The titles of major works and of general divisions are set in small capitals.] 



A. C. L.. To, 19. 

Above and Below, 78. 

Absence, 400. 

After the Burial, 308. 

Agassi?, 374. 

Agro-Dolce, 402. 

Al Fresco, 295. 

.Aladdin. 300. 

Alexander, Fanny, To, 385. 

All-Saints, 319. 

Allegra, 10. 

Ambrose. 77. 

Anti-Apis, 94. 

Appledore, Pictures from, 302. 

April Birthday, An — at Sea, 437. 

Arcadia Rediviva, 396. 

At the iiums Centennial, 427. 

At the Commencement Dinner, 1866, 430. 

Auf Wie iersehen, 308. 

Auspeaf, 409. 

Bankside, 383. 

Bartlett. Mr. John, To, 322. 

Bearer Brook, 99. 

Beggar, The, 5. 

Bibholatres, 99. 

Biglow. Mr. Hosea, to the Editor of the At- 
lantic Monthly, 275. 

Biglow. Mr., Latest Views of, 265. 

Biglow P.jjpers, The, 165. 

Biglow s, Mr. Hosea, Speech in March Meet- 
ing, 27 ' 

Birch-Tree, The, 79. 

Birdofredi'.m Sawin, Esq., to Mr. Hosea Big- 
low, 220. 

Birdofredum Sawin, Esq., to Mr. Hosea Big- 
low, 239. 

Birthday Verses, 398. 

Black Preacher, The, 395. 

Blondel, Two Scenes from the Life of, 336. 

Bon Voyage, 386. 

Boss, The, 433. 

Boston, Letter from, 111. 

Bradford, C. F., To, 383. 

Brakes, The, 406. 

Brittany, A Legend of, 28. 

Broken Tryst, The, 402. 

nnial, At the, 427. 

Captive, The, 78. 

.;■■■''.. Fugitive Slaves near Washington, 

On the, 82. 
Casa sin Alma, 403. 
Cathedral, The, 349. 
Cervantes, Prison of, 405. 
Changed Perspective, 433. 
Changeling, The, 89. 



Channing, Dr., Elegy on the Death of, 104. 

Chippewa Legend, A, 53. 

Christmas Carol, A, 403. 

Cochituate Water, Ode written for the Cele- 
bration of the Introduction of the, into the 
City of Boston, 96. 

Columbus, 55. 

Commemoration, Ode recited at the Harvard, 
340. 

Concord Bridge, Ode read at the One Hun- 
dredth Anniversary of the Fight at, 361. 

Contrast, A, 75. 

Courtin', The, 170, 219. 

Credidimus Jovem regnare, 423. 

Curtis, George William, An Epistle to, 388. 

Dancing Bear, The, 404. 
Dandelion, To the, 83. 
Dante, On a Portrait of, by Giotto, 87. 
Dara, 291. 

Darkened Mind, The, 319. 
Dead House, The, 309. 
Death of a Friend's Child, On the, 87. 
Death of Queen Mercedes, 405. 
Debate in the Sennit, The, 197. 
Discovery, The, 410. 

Dobson's, Mr. Austin, " Old World Idylls," On 
Receiving a Copy of, 382. 

E. G. de R., 386. 

Earlier Poems, 1. 

Eleanor makes Macaroons, 408. 

Elegy on the Death of Dr. Channing, 104. 

Ember Picture, An, 329. 

Endymion, 392. 

Epistle to George William Curtis, An, 388. 

Estrangement, 398. 

Eurydice, 88. 

Ewig-Weibliche, Das, 399. 

Extreme Unction, 75. 

Eye's Treasury, The, 406. 

Fable for Critics, A, 113. 

Fact or Fancy ? 402. 

Falcon, The, 48. 

Familiar Epistle to a Friend, A, 327. 

Fancy's Casuistry, 322. 

Fatherland, The, 14. 

Festina Lente, 248. 

Finding of the Lyre, The, 294. 

First Snow-FaU, The, 292. 

Fitz Adam's Story, 411. 

Flying Dutchman, The, 422. 

Foot-Path, The, 333. 

For an Autograph, 295. 

Foreboding, A, 407. 

Forlorn, The, 14. 



49° 



INDEX OF TITLES 



Fountain, The, 11. 

Fountain of Youth, The, 316. 

Fourth of July, 1876, An Ode for the, 370. 

Fragments of an Unfinished Poem, 158. 

France, Ode to, 91. 

" Franciseus de Verulamio sic cogitavit," 409. 

Freedom, 97. 

Future, To the, 64. 

Garrison, W. L., To, 102. 

Ghost-Seer, The, 83. 

Giddings, J. E., To, 25. 

Glance behind the Curtain, A, 49. 

Godminster Chimes, 297. 

Gold Egg : A Dream-Fantasy, 326. 

Grant, General, On a Bust of, 439. 

Graves of Two English Soldiers on Concord Bat- 

tle-Ground, Lines suggested by the, 96. 
Growth of the Legend, The, 74. 

H. W. L., To, 330. 

Hamburg, An Incident of the Fire at, 59. 

Happiness, Ode to, 323. 

Harvard Commemoration, Ode recited at the, 

340. 
Heartsease and Rue, 374. 
Hebe, 65. 
Heritage, The, 15. 
Holmes, To, 381. 
Hood, To the Memory of, 105. 
How I consulted the Oracle of the Goldfishes, 

433. 
Hunger and Cold, 61. 

In a Copy of Omar Khayyam, 382. 

In Absence, 24. 

In an Album, 430. 

In the Half-Way House, 426. 

In the Twilight, 332. 

Incident in a Railroad Car, An, 45. 

Incident of the Fire at Hamburg, An, 59. 

Indian-Summer Reverie, An, 68. 

Inscriptions, 432. 

For a Bell at Cornell University. 

For a Memorial Window to Sir Walter Ra- 
leigh, set up in St. Margaret's, Westmin- 
ster, by American Contributors. 

Proposed for a Soldiers' and Sailors' Monu- 
ment in Boston. 
International Copyright, 433. 
Interview with Miles Standish, An, 80. 
Inveraray, On Planting a Tree at, 387. 
Invita Minerva, 315. 
Invitation, An, 300. 
Irene\ 4. 

Jonathan to John, 238. 

Keats, To the Spirit of, 20. 
Kettelopotomachia, 269. 
Kossuth, 100. 

Lamartine, To, 101. 

Landlord, The, 61. 

Last Poems, 433. 

Latest Views of Mr. Biglow, 265. 

Leaving the Matter open, 176. 



Legend of Brittany, A, 28. 

L'Envoi (To the Muse), 347. 

L'Envoi (Whether my heart hath wiser grown 
or not), 25. 

Lesson, The, 410. 

Letter, A, from a candidate for the presidency 
in answer to suttin questions proposed by Mr. 
Hosea Biglow, inclosed in a note from Mr. 
Biglow to S. H. Gay, Esq., editor of the Na- 
tional Anti-Slavery Standard, 203. 

Letter, A, from Mr. Ezekiel Biglow of Jaalam 
to the Hon. Joseph T. Buckingham, editor of 
the Boston Courier, inclosing a poem of his 
son, Mr. Hosea Biglow, 181. 

Letter, A, from Mr. Hosea Biglow to the Hon. 
J. T. Buckingham, editor of the Boston Cou- 
rier, covering a letter from Mr. B. Sawin, 
private in the Massachusetts Regiment, 183. 

Letter, A Second, from B. Sawin, Esq., 206. 

Letter, A Third, from B. Sawin, Esq., 212. 

Letter from Boston, 111. 

Lines (suggested by the Graves of Two English 
Soldiers on Concord Battle-Ground), 96. 

Longing, 91. 

Love, 8. 

Love and Thought, 438. 

Love's Clock, 407. 

M. O. S., To, 23. 

Mahmood the Image-Breaker, 315. 

Maple, The, 405. 

Masaccio, 296. 

Mason and Slidell: a Yankee Idyll, 228. 

Memorise Positum, 337. 

Memorial Verses, 100. 

Message of Jeff Davis in Secret Session, A, 248. J 

Midnight, 15. 

Miner, The, 325. 

Miscellaneous Poems, 28. 

Misconception, A, 432. 

Miss D. T., To, 387. 

Monna Lisa, 400. 

Mood, A, 310. 

Moon, The, 9. 

My Love, 6. 

My Portrait Gallery, 403. 

Nest, The, 397. 
New-Year's Eve, 1850, 295. 
New Year's Greeting, A, 410. 
Nightingale in the Study, The, 331. 
Nightwatehes, 405. 
Nobler Lover, The, 438. 
Nomades, The, 301. 
Norton, Charles Eliot, To, 285. 

Oak, The, 76. s „ 

Ode, An (for the Fourth of July, 1876), 370. 
Ode (In the old days of awe and keen-eyed won 

der), 11. . . 

Ode (read at the One Hundredth Anniversar 

of the Fight at Concord Bridge), 361. 
Ode recited at the Harvard Commemoration 

340. 
Ode to France, 91. 
Ode to Happiness, 323. 
Ode (written for the Celebration of the Into 



INDEX OF TITLES 



491 



Ion of the Cochituate Water into the 
J of Boston), 96. 
FKhayyam, In a Copy of, 382. 

JBust of General Grant, 439. 

fa Portrait of Dante by Giotto, 87. 

Fan Autumn Sketch of H. G. Wild, 387. 

1 being asked for an Autograph inVenice, 404. 
_£)n Board the '76, 339. 
H3n burning some Old Letters, 401. 
On hearing a Sonata of Beethoven's played in 

the Next Room, 438. 
On planting a Tree at Inveraray, 387. 
On reading Wordsworth's Sonnets in Defence 

of Capital Punishment, 22. 
On receiving a Copy of Mr. Austin Dobson's 

" Old World Idylls," 382. 
On the Capture of Fugitive Slaves near Wash- 
ington, 82. 
On the Death of a Friend's Child, 87. 
On the Death of Charles Turner Torrey, 104. 
Optimist, The, 400. 
Oracle of the Goldfishes, How I consulted the, 

433. 
Oriental Apologue, An, 161. 
Origin of Didactic Poetry, The, 421. 

Palfrey, John Gorham, To, 101. 

Palinode, 308. 

Paolo to Francesca, 403. 

Parable, A (An ass munched thistles, while a 

nightingale), 432. 
Parable, A (Said Christ our Lord, I will go 

and see ), 95. 
Parable, A (Worn and footsore was the Prophet), 

19. 
Parting of the Ways, The, 298. 
Past, To the, 63. 
Perdita, singing. To, 8. 
Pessimoptimism, 406. 
Petition, The, 402. 
Phillips, WendeU, 24. 
Phoebe, 399. 

Pictures from Appledore, 302. 
Pine-Tree, To a, 62. 
Pioneer, The, 90. 
Pious Editor's Creed, The, 200. 
Poems of the War, 334. 
Portrait Gallery, My, 403. 
Portrait of Dante by Giotto, Oh a, 87. 
Prayer, A, 15. 

Pregnant Comment, The, 409. 
Present Crisis, The, 67. 
Prison of Cervantes, 405. 
Prometheus, 38. 
Protest, The, 401. 

Recall, The, 400. 

Remarks of Increase D. O'Phace, Esquire, at 
an extrumpery caucus in State Street, re- 
ported by Mr. H. Biglow, 191. 

Remembered Music, 10. 

Requiem, A, 18. 

Rhcecus, 46. 

Rosaline, 17. 

Rose, The : a Ballad, 16. 

St. Michael the Weigher, 436. 



Sayings, 432. 

Scherzo, 408. 

Science and Poetry, 410. 

Scottish Border, 404. 

Search, The, 66. 

Seaweed, 294. 

Secret, The, 411. 

Self-Study, 302. 

Serenade, 5. 

She came and went, 89. 

Shepherd of King Admetus, The, 44. 

Si descendero in Inf ernum, ades, 63. 

Singing Leaves, The, 293. 

Sirens, The, 2. 

Sixty-Eigbth Birthday, 433. 

Song (O moonlight deep and tender), 19. 

Song (to M. L.), 10. 

Song (Violet ! sweet violet !), 17. 

Sonnets. 

Bankside, 383. 

" Beloved, in the noisy city here," 22. 

Bon Voyage ! 386. 

Brakes, The, 406. 

Dancing Bear, The, 404. 

Death of Queen Mercedes, 405. 

E. G. de R., 386. 

Eye's Treasury, The, 406. 

" For this true nobleness I seek in vain," 20. 

Foreboding, A, 407. 

" Great truths are portions of the soul of 
man," 20. 

"I ask not for those thoughts, that sudden 
leap," 21. 

"I cannot think that thou shouldst pass 
away," 21. 

"I grieve not that ripe knowledge takes 
away," 25. 

" I thought our love at full, but I did err," 
25. 

"I would not have this perfect love of 
ours," 20. 

In Absence, 24. 

Maple, The, 405. 

"My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst 
die," 21. 

Nightwatches, 405. 

On an Autumn Sketch of H. G. Wild, 387. 

On being asked for an Autograph in Venice, 
404. 

On reading Wordsworth's Sonnets in Defence 
of Capital Punishment, 22. 

" Our love is not a fading, earthly flower," 24. 

Paolo to Francesca, 403. 

Pessimoptimism, 406. 

Phillips, WendeU, 24. 

Prison of Cervantes, 405. 

Scottish Border, 404. 

Street, The, 24. 

Sub Pondere creseit, 22. 

' ' There never yet was flower fair in vain," 21. 

To A. C. L., 19. 

To a Friend, 385. 

To a Lady playing on the Cithern, 406. 

To Fanny Alexander, 385. 

To J. R. Giddings, 25. 

To M. O. S., 23. 

To M. W., on her Birthday, 21. 



492 



INDEX OF TITLES 



To Miss D. T., 387. 

To the Spirit of Keats, 20. 

To Whittier, 386. 

"What were I, Love, if I were stripped of 
thee," 20. 

Winloek, Joseph, 384. 

With a copy of Aucassin and Nicolete, 387. 

With an Armchair, 385. 

Wynian, Jeffries, 385. 
Sower, The, 60. 
Speech of Honourable Preserved Doe in Secret 

Caucus, 253. 
Standish, Miles, An Interview with, 80. 
Stanzas on Freedom, 55. 
Street, The, 24. 
Studies for Two Heads, 85. 
Sub Pondere crescit, 22. 
Summer Storm, 7. 
Sun-Worship, 433. 
Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line, 260. 

Telepathy, 408. 
Tempora Mutantur, 425. 
Three Memorial Poems, 360. 
Threnodia, 1. 

To , 97. 

To A. C. L., 19. 

To a Friend, 385. 

To a Lady playing on the Cithern, 406. 

To a Pine-Tree, 62. 

To C. F. Bradford, 383. 

To Charles Eliot Norton, 285. 

To H. W. L., 330. 

To Holmes, 381. 

To J. R. Giddings, 25. 

To John Gorham Palfrey, 101. 

To Lamartine, 101. 

To M. O. S., 23. 

To M. W., on her Birthday, 21. 

To Miss D. T., 387. 

To Mr. John Bartlett, 322. 

To Perdita, singing, 8. 

To the Dandelion, 83. 

To the Future, 64. 

To the Memory of Hood, 105. 






To the Past, 63. 

To the Spirit of Keats, 20. 

To W. L. Garrison, 102. 

To Whittier, 386. 

Token, The, 44. 

Torrey, Charles Turner, On the Death of, W 

Trial, 48. 4 * 

Turner's Old T<5me>aire, 436. 

Two Gunners, The, 176. 

Two Scenes from the Life of Blondel, 336. 

Under the October Maples, 407. 

Under the Old Elm, 364. 

Under the Willows, and Other Poems, 

285. 
Under the Willows, 286. 
Unhappy Lot of Mr. Knott, The, 149. 

Valentine, A, 437. 

Verses, intended to go with a Posset Dish, 438. 

Villa Franca, 324. 

Vision of Sir Latjnfal, The, 106. 

Voyage to Vinland, The, 311. 

Washers of the Shroud, The, 334. 

What Mr. Robinson thinks, 187. 

What Rabbi Jehosha said, 319. 

Whittier, To, 386. 

Wild, H. G., On an Autumn Sketch of, 387. 

Wind-Harp, The, 307. 

Winloek, Joseph, 384. 

Winter-Evening Hymn to my Fire, A, 320. 

With a Copy of Aucassin and Nicolete, 387. 

With a Pair of Gloves lost in a Wager, 433. 

With a Pressed Flo%er, 5. 

With a Seashell, 411. 

With an Armchair, 385. 

Without and Within, 297. 

Wordsworth's Sonnets in Defence of Capital 

Punishment, On reading, 22. 
Wyman, Jeffries, 385. 

Youthful Experiment in English Hexameters. 

A, 398. 
Yussouf, 318. 



LEAp'13 



I 



I 



^H 






